The Goose Man Part 72

They were walking arm in arm, and Sylvia was laughing at Dorothea's easy-flowing conversation. They seemed to be getting along perfectly together: there could be no mistaking the picture he saw before him.

Sylvia told Daniel when she was alone with him that she had taken a great liking to Dorothea. She remarked that her cheerfulness was irresistible and contagious, and that when she was with children she became a child herself.

Yet, despite all this, Sylvia studied Daniel. And when Dorothea was present she studied her too: she cast fleeting, searching, una.s.sured glances at them-at Daniel and at Dorothea.

Daniel and Dorothea were married on a sunny day in December.

DOROTHEA

I

For the past fortnight, Philippina and Agnes had been living at Frau Hadebusch's. A message came from Daniel telling Philippina that she and Agnes should return, or, if she preferred to stay with Frau Hadebusch, she should send Agnes home at once.

"There you have it," said Frau Hadebusch, "the master speaks."

"Ah, him-he's been speakin' to me for a long while. Much good it does him," said Philippina. "The child stays with me, and I'm not going back.

That settles it! What, Agnes? Yes?"

Agnes was sitting on the bench by the stove with Henry the idiot, reading the greasy pages of a cheap novel. When Philippina spoke to her, she looked up in a distracted way and smiled. The twelve-year-old child had a perfectly expressionless face; and as she never got out of the house for any length of time, her skin was almost yellow.

"It ain't no use to try to buck him," continued Frau Hadebusch, who looked as old as the mountains and resembled generally a crippled witch, "he c'n demand the kid, and if he does he'll git her. If you ain't careful, I'll get mixed up in the mess before long."

"Well, how do you feel about it, Agnes? Do you want to go back to your daddy?" said Philippina, turning to the girl, and looking at Frau Hadebusch in a knowing way.

Agnes's face clouded up. She hated her father. This was the point to which Philippina had brought matters by her incessant whisperings and ugly remarks behind Daniel's back. Agnes was convinced that she was a burden to her father, and his marriage had merely confirmed what she already felt she knew. Deep in her silent soul she carried the picture of her prematurely deceased mother, as if it were that of a woman who had been murdered, sacrificed. Philippina had told her how her mother had committed suicide; it was a fearful tale in her language. It had been the topic of conversation between her and her charge on many a cold, dark winter evening. Agnes always said that when she was big and could talk, she would take vengeance on her father.

When she could talk! That was her most ardent wish. For she was silent-born. Her soul pined in a prison that was much harsher and harder than that in which her mother's soul had been housed and hara.s.sed.

Gertrude had some bright moments; Agnes never. She was incapable of enthusiasm; she could not look up. For her heart, her soul was not merely asleep, torpid, lethargic; it was hopelessly dried up, withered.

Life was not in it.

"I am not going to those Doderleins," she said, crying.

But in the evening Daniel came over. He took Philippina to one side, and had a serious talk with her. He explained the reasons for his getting married a third time as well as he could without going too deeply into the subject. "I needed a wife; I needed a woman to keep house for me; I needed a companion. Philippina, I am very grateful to you for what you have done, but there must also be a woman in my home who can cheer me up, turn my thoughts to higher things. I have a heavy calling; that you cannot appreciate. So don't get stubborn, Philippina. Pack up your things, and come back home. How can we get along without you?"

For the first time in his life he spoke to her as though she were a woman and a human being. Philippina stared at him. Then she burst out into a loud, boisterous laugh, and began to show her whole supply of scorn. "Jesus, Daniel, how you c'n flatter a person! Who'd a thought it!

You've always been such a sour dough. Very well. Say: 'Dear Philippina!'

Say it real slow: 'D-e-a-r Philippina,' and then I'll come."

Daniel looked into the face of the girl, who never did seem young and who had aged fearfully in the last few months. "Nonsense!" he cried, and turned away.

Philippina stamped the floor with her foot. Henry, the idiot, came out into the hall, holding a lamp above his head.

"Does the sanctimonious clerk still live here?" asked Daniel, looking up at the crooked old stairway, while a flood of memories came rus.h.i.+ng over him.

"Thank G.o.d, no!" snarled Philippina. "He'd be the last straw. I feel sick at the stomach when I see a man."

Daniel again looked into her detestable, ugly, distorted, and wicked face. He was accustomed to question everything, eyes and bodies, about their existence in terms of tones, or their transformation into tones.

Here he suddenly felt the toneless; he had the feeling one might have on looking at a deep-sea fish: it is lifeless, toneless. He thought of his Eva; he longed for his Eva. Just then Agnes came out of the door to look for Philippina.

He laid his hand on Agnes's hair, and said good-naturedly, looking at Philippina: "Well, then-d-e-a-r Philippina, come back home!"

Agnes jerked herself away from him; he looked at the child amazed; he was angry, too. Philippina folded her hands, bowed her head, and murmured with much humility: "Very well, Daniel, we'll be back to-morrow."

II

Philippina arrived at the front door at ten o'clock in the morning. In one hand she carried her bundle; by the other she led Agnes, then studying her _milieu_ with uneasy eyes.

Dorothea opened the door. She was neatly and tastefully dressed: she wore a blue gingham dress and a white ap.r.o.n with a lace border. Around her neck was a gold chain, and suspended from the chain a medallion.

"Oh, the children!" she cried cheerfully, "Philippina and Agnes. What do you think of that! G.o.d bless you, children. You are home at last." She wanted to hug Agnes, but the child pulled away from her as timidly as she had pulled away from her father yesterday. In either case, she pulled away!

Philippina screwed her mouth into a knot on hearing a woman ten years her junior call her a child; she looked at Dorothea from head to foot.

Dorothea scarcely noticed her. "Just imagine, Philippin', the cook didn't come to-day, so I thought I would try my own hand," said Dorothea with glib gravity, "but I don't know, the soup meat is still as hard as a rock. Won't you come and see what's the matter?" She took Philippina into the kitchen.

"Ah, you've got to have a lid on the pot, and what's more, that ain't a regular fire," remarked Philippina superciliously.

Dorothea had already turned to something else. She had found a gla.s.s of preserved fruit, had opened it, taken a long-handled spoon, dived into it, put the spoon to her mouth, and was licking away for dear life.

"Tastes good," she said, "tastes like lemon. Try it, Philippin'." She held the spoon to Philippina's lips so that she could try it. Philippina thrust the spoon rudely to one side.

"No, no, you have got to try it. I insist. Taste it!" continued Dorothea, and poked the spoon tightly against Philippina's lips. "I insist, I insist," she repeated, half beseechingly, half in the tone of a command, so that Philippina, who somehow or other could not find her veteran power of resistance, and in order to have peace, let the spoon be shoved into her mouth.

Just then old Jordan came out into the hall, and with him the chimney-sweeper who wished to clean the chimney.

"Herr Inspector, Herr Inspector," cried Dorothea, laughing; and when the old man followed her call, she gave him a spoonful, too. The chimney-sweep likewise; he had to have his. And last but not least came Agnes.

They all laughed; a faint smile even ventured across Agnes's pale face, while Daniel, frightened from his room by the hubbub, came out and stood in the kitchen door and laughed with the rest.

"Do you see, Daniel, do you see? They all eat out of my hand," said Dorothea contentedly. "They all eat out of my hand. That's the way I like to have things. To your health, folks!"

III

One afternoon Dorothea, with an open letter in her hand, came rus.h.i.+ng into Daniel's room, where he was working.

"Listen, Daniel, Frau Feistelmann invites me over to a party at her house to-morrow. May I go?"

"You are disturbing me, my dear. Can't you see you are upsetting me?"

asked Daniel reproachfully.

"Oh, I see," breathed Dorothea, and looked helplessly at the stack of scores that lay on the top of the table. "I am to take my violin along and play a piece or two for the people."

Daniel gazed into s.p.a.ce without being able to comprehend her remarks. He was composing.

Dorothea lost her patience. She stepped up to the place on the wall where the mask of Zingarella had been hanging since his return home.