The Goose Man Part 76

Something drew him there and then here. He would leave the house, and then be taken with a longing to return. He noticed that people were laughing at him; laughing at him behind his back. He read mockery in the eyes of his pupils; the maids in the house t.i.ttered when he pa.s.sed by.

What did they know? What were they concealing? Perhaps his soul could have told what they knew and what they concealed; but he was unwilling to drag it all out into the realm of known, nameable things.

As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him, leave him in peace, his despair increased. "What have you done, Daniel!"

a voice within him cried, "what have you done!" The shades of the sisters, arm in arm, arose before him.

The feeling of having made a mistake, a mistake that could never be rectified, burned like fire within him. His work, so nearly completed, had suddenly died away.

For the sake of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his presentient soul into peace.

The thing that troubled him worst of all was the way Philippina looked at him.

Since the birth of the child he had been living in Eleanore's room. Old Jordan was consideration itself: he went around in his stocking feet so as not to disturb him.

One night Daniel took the candle, and went downstairs to Dorothea's room. She woke up, screamed, looked at him bewildered, recognised him, became indignant, and then laughed mockingly and sensually.

He sat down on the side of her bed, and took her right hand between his two. But he had a disagreeable sensation on feeling her hand in his, and looked at her fingers. They were not finely formed: they were thicker at the ends than in the middle; they could not remain quiet; they twitched constantly.

"This can't keep up, Dorothea," he said in a kindly tone, "you are ruining your own life and mine too. Why do you have all these people around you? Is the pleasure you derive from a.s.sociating with them so great that it benumbs your conscience? I have no idea what you are doing. Tell me about it. The household affairs are in a wretched condition; everything is in disorder. And that cigar smoke out in the living room! I opened a window. And your child! It has no mother. Look at its little face, and see how pale and sickly it looks!"

"Well, I can't help it; Philippina puts poppy in the milk so that it will sleep longer," Dorothea answered, after the fas.h.i.+on of guilty women: of the various reproaches Daniel had cast at her, she seized upon the one of which she felt the least guilty. But after this, Daniel had no more to say.

"I am so tired and sleepy," said Dorothea, and again blinked at him out of one corner of her eye with that mocking, sensual look. As he showed no inclination to leave, she yawned, and continued in an angry tone: "Why do you wake a person up in the middle of the night, if all you want is to scold them? Get out of here, you loathsome thing!"

She turned her back on him, and rested her head on her hand. Opposite her bed was a mirror in a gold frame. She saw herself in it; she was pleased with herself lying there in that offended mood, and she smiled.

Daniel, who had been so cruel to n.o.ble women now become shades, saw how she smiled at herself, infatuated with herself: he took pity on such child-like vanity.

"There is a Chinese fairy tale about a Princess," he said, and bent down over Dorothea, "who received from her mother as a wedding present a set of jewel boxes. There was a costly present in each box, but the last, smallest, innermost one was locked, and the Princess had to promise that she would never open it. She kept her promise for a while, but curiosity at last got the better of her, she forgot her vow, and opened the last little box by force. There was a mirror in it; and when she looked into it and saw how beautiful she was, she began to abuse her husband. She tortured him so that he killed her one day."

Dorothea looked at him terrified. Then she laughed and said: "What a stupid story! Such a tale of horror!" She laid her cheek on the pillow, and again looked in the mirror.

The following morning Daniel received an anonymous letter. It read as follows: "You will be guarding your own honour if you keep a sharp lookout on your wife. A Well-wisher."

A cold fever came over him. For a few days he dragged his body from room to room as if poisoned. He avoided every one in the house. One night he again felt a desire to go down to Dorothea. When he reached the door to her room, he found it bolted. He knocked, but received no answer. He knocked again, this time more vigorously. He heard her turn her head on the pillow. "Let me sleep!" cried Dorothea angrily.

"Open the door, Dorothea," he begged.

"No, I will not; I want to sleep." These were the words that reached his ear from behind the bolted door.

He pressed three or four times on the latch, implored her three or four times to let him come in, but received no answer. He did not wish to make any more noise, looked straight ahead as if into a dark hole, and then turned and went back to his room in the attic.

XIII

Friedrich Benda was again in Europe. All the newspapers contained accounts of the discoveries made on the expedition. Last autumn Arab dealers in ivory had found him in the land of Niam-Niam, taken an interest in him, and finally brought him, then seemingly in the throes of imminent death, back to the Nile. In England he was celebrated as a hero and a bold pioneer; the Royal Geographical Society had made him an honorary member; and the incidents of his journey were the talk of the day.

Toward the close of April he came to Nuremberg to visit his mother. The blind old woman had been carefully and cautiously prepared for his coming. She nevertheless came very near dying with joy; her life was in grave danger for a while.

Benda had not wished to stay more than a week: his business and his work called him back to London; he had lectures to deliver, and he had to see a book through the press, a book in which he had given a description of the years spent in Africa.

At the urgent request of his mother he had decided to stay longer.

Moreover, during the first days of his visit to Nuremberg, he suffered from a severe attack of a fever he had brought with him from the tropics, and this forced him to remain in bed. The news of his presence in the city finally became generally known, and he was annoyed by the curiosity of many people who had formerly never concerned themselves about him in the slightest.

He was eager to see Daniel; every hour of delay in meeting his old friend was an hour of reproach. But his mother insisted that he stay with her; he had to sit near her and tell of his experiences in Africa.

When he heard of the outer events in Daniel's life he was filled with terror. The fact that made the profoundest impression on him was Daniel's marriage to Dorothea Doderlein. People told him a great many things about their life and how they were getting along, and with each pa.s.sing day he felt that it would be more difficult to go to Daniel. One evening he got his courage together and decided to go. He got as far as aegydius Place, when he was seized with such a feeling of sadness and discomfort at the thought of all the changes that time and fate had made that he turned back. He felt as if he might be deceived by a picture which would perhaps still show the features of Daniel as he looked in former years, but that he would be so changed inwardly that words would be unable to bring the two together.

He longed to talk with some one who loved Daniel and who had followed his career with pure motives. He had to think for a long while: where was there such a person? He thought of old Herold and went to him. He directed the conversation without digression to a point that was of prime importance to him. And in order to put the old man in as confidential a frame of mind as possible, he reminded him of a night when the three of them, Daniel, Herold, and Benda, had sat in the Mohren Cellar drinking wine and discussing things in general, important and unimportant, that have a direct bearing on life.

The old man nodded; he recalled the evening. He spoke of Daniel's genius with a modesty and a deference that made Benda's heart swell. He raised his finger, and said with a fine fire in his eye: "I'll stand good for him. I prophesy on the word of the Bible: A star will rise from Jacob."

Then he spoke of Eleanore; he was pa.s.sionately fond of her. He told how she had brought him the quartette, and how she had glowed with inspiration and the desire to help. He also had a good deal to say about Gertrude, especially with regard to her mental breakdown and her death.

Benda left the old man at once quiet and disquieted. He walked along the street for a long while, rapt in thought. When he looked up he saw that he was standing before Daniel's house. He went in.

XIV

Daniel knew that Benda had returned: Philippina had read it in the newspaper and told him about it. Dorothea, who had learned of his return from her father, had also spoken to him about it. He had also heard other people speak of it.

The first time he heard it he was startled. He felt he would have to flee to his friend of former days. Then he was seized with the same fear that had come over Benda: Is our relation to each other the same? The thought of meeting Benda filled him with a sense of shame, to which was added a touch of bitterness as day after day pa.s.sed by and Benda never called or wrote. "It is all over," he thought, "he has forgotten me." He would have liked to forget too; and he could have done it, for his mind was wandering, restless, strayed.

One evening as he crossed the square he noticed that the windows of his house were all brilliantly lighted. He went to the kitchen, where he found Agnes at the table seeding plums.

"Who is here again?" he asked. One could hear laughter, loud and boisterous, in the living room.

Agnes, scarcely looking up, reeled off the names: Councillor Finkeldey, Herr von Ginsterberg, Herr Samuelsky, Herr Hahn, a strange man whose name she did not know, Frau Feistelmann and her sister.

Daniel remained silent for a while. Then he went up to Agnes, put his hand under her chin, lifted her head, and murmured: "And you? And you?"

Agnes frowned, and was afraid to look into his face. Suddenly she said: "To-day is the anniversary of mother's death." With that she looked at him fixedly.

"So?" said Daniel, sat down on the edge of the table, and laid his head in his hand. Some one was playing the piano in the living room. Since Daniel had taken the grand piano up to his room, Dorothea had rented a small one. The rhythmical movement of dancing couples could be heard quite distinctly.

"I'd like to leave this place," said Agnes, as she threw a worm-eaten plum in the garbage can. "In Beckschlager Street there is a seamstress who wants to teach me to sew."

"Why don't you go?" asked Daniel. "It would be a very sensible thing to do. But what will Philippina say about it?"

"Oh, she doesn't object, provided I spend my evenings and Sundays with her."

The front door bell rang, and Agnes went out: there was some one to see Daniel. He hesitated, started toward the door, shook and stepped back, seized with trembling hand the kitchen lamp in order to make certain that he was not mistaken, for it was dark, but there could be no mistake. It was Benda.

They looked at each other in violent agitation. Benda was the first to reach out his hand; then Daniel reached out his. Something seemed to snap within him. He became dizzy, his tall, stiff body swung back and forth. Then he fell into the arms of his friend, whom he had lived without for seventeen years.

Benda was not prepared for such a scene; he was unable to speak. Then Daniel tore himself loose from the embrace of his old comrade, pushed the dishevelled hair back from his forehead, and said hastily: "Come upstairs with me; no one will disturb us up there."

Daniel lighted the lamp in his room, and then looked around to see whether old Jordan was at home. Jordan's room was dark. He closed the door and took a seat opposite Benda. He was breathing heavily.