The Goose Man
friendship and your services, I am your faithful kinsman, Gottfried
Nothafft."
IV
Before peace had been made with France, Gottfried lay down to die. He
was buried in the little churchyard by the wall, and a cross was set
upon his grave.
Jason Philip and Theresa had come to the funeral, and stayed for three
days. An examination of her inheritance showed, to Marian's
consternation, that there were not twenty taler in the house, and what
she saw ahead of her was a life of wretchedness and want. Jason Philip's
counsel and his plan were a genuine consolation to her, and his
declaration that he would stand by her to the best of his ability eased
her heart.
It was determined that she was to open a little shop, and Jason advanced
her one hundred taler. All the while he had the air of a made man. He
held his head high, and his fat little cheeks glowed with health. He was
fond of drumming with his fingers on the window pane and of whistling.
The tune he whistled was the Marseillaise, but that tune was not known
in Eschenbach.
Daniel observed carefully his uncle's lips, and whistled the tune after
him. Jason Philip laughed so that his little belly quivered. Then he
remembered that it was a house of mourning, and said: "What a boy!"
But really he did not like the boy. "Our excellent Gottfried does not
seem to have trained him carefully," he remarked once, when Daniel
showed some childish recalcitrance. "The boy needs a strong hand."
Daniel heard these words, and looked scornfully into his uncle's face.
Sunday afternoon, when the coffee had been served, the Schimmelweis
couple was ready to leave. But Daniel was not to be found. The wife of
the inn-keeper called out across the road that she had seen him follow
the organist to church. Marian ran to the church to fetch him. After a
while she returned, and said to Jason Philip, who was waiting: "He's
crouching in the organ loft, and I can't get him to move."
"Can't get him to move?" Jason Philip started up, and his little red
cheeks gleamed with rage. "What does that mean? How can you tolerate
that?" And he himself proceeded to the church to get the disobedient
child.
As he was mounting the organ-loft he met the organist, who laughed and
said: "I suppose you're looking for Daniel? He's still staring at the
organ, as though my bit of playing had bewitched him."
"I'll drive the witch-craft out of him," Jason Philip snarled.
Daniel was crouching on the floor behind the organ, and did not stir at
his uncle's call. He was so absorbed that the expression of his eyes
made his uncle wonder whether the boy was really sane. He grasped
Daniel's shoulder, and spoke in a tone of violent command: "Come home
with me this minute!"
Daniel looked up, awoke from his dream, and became aware of the
indignant hiss of that alien voice. He tore himself away, and declared
insolently that he would stay where he was. That enraged Jason Philip
utterly, and he tried again to lay hands on the boy in order to drag him
down by force. Daniel leapt back, and cried with a quivering voice:
"Don't touch me!"
Perhaps it was the silence of the nave that had an admonishing and
terrifying effect on Jason Philip. Perhaps the extraordinary malignity
and passion in the little fellow's face caused him to desist. At all
events he turned around and went without another word.
"The stage-coach is waiting. We'll be late!" his wife called out to him.
He turned a sinister face to Marian. "You're bringing up a fine product,
I must say. You'll have your own troubles with him."
Marian's eyes fell. She was not unprepared for the reproach. She was
herself frightened at the boy's savage obduracy, his self-centred
insistence on his imaginings, his hardness and impatience and contempt
of all restraint. It seemed to her as though fate had inspired the soul
of her child with something of the foolish and torturing hatred which
she had nursed during her pregnancy.
V
Jason Philip Schimmelweis left the dark basement on the square, rented a
shop near the bridge by the museum, and set up as a bookseller. Thus
his old ambition was realised at last.
He hired a shop-assistant, and Theresa sat all day at the till and
learned to keep books.
When she asked her husband what was the source of his capital, he
answered that a friend who had great confidence in his ability had
advanced him the money at a low rate of interest. He added that he had
been pledged not to divulge the name of his friend.
Theresa did not believe him. Her mind was full of dark forebodings. She
brooded incessantly and grew to be watchful and suspicious. In secret
she tried to ferret out the identity of this nameless friend, but came
upon no trace. Now and then she tried to cross-question Jason Philip. On
such occasions he would snarl at her malignantly. There was no talk of
the return of the money or of the payment of interest on it, nor did the
books show an entry of any sort. To rid herself of the anxieties that
accompanied her through the years, it would have been necessary for
Theresa to believe in helpful fairies. And she did not believe in them.
Nature had given her neither gaiety nor gentleness; under the pressure
of this insoluble mystery she became ill-tempered as a wife and moody as
a mother.
When there were no customers in the shop she would pick up books quite
at random and read in them. Sometimes it was a novel dealing with crime,
sometimes a garrulous tract dealing with secret vices. Such things were
needed to attract a public that regarded the buying of books as a sinful
waste. Without special pleasure, and with a morose sort of thirst for
information, she read revelations of court life and the printed
betrayals of all kinds of spies, adventurers, and rogues. Quite
unconsciously she came to judge the world to which she had no real
access according to these books which offered her as truth the issues of
sick and pestilential minds.
But as the years went on, and prosperity raised Jason Philip definitely
into the merchant class, he abandoned the shadier side of his business.
He was a man who knew his age and who unfurled his sails when he was
sure of a favourable wind. He entrusted his ship more and more to the
ever swelling current of the political parties of the proletariat, and
hoped to find his profit where, in a half-hearted way, his convictions
lay. He exhibited a rebel's front to the middle-classes, and held out a
hand of unctuous fellowship to the toiler. He knew how to make his way!
Many an insignificant shop-keeper had been known to exchange his musty
rooms for a villa in the suburbs, to furnish it pretentiously, and to
send his sons on trips abroad.
In these days, too, the old imperial city awoke from its romantic
slumber. Once the sublime churches, the lovely curves of the bridges,
and the quaint gables of the houses had formed an artistic whole. Now
they became mere remnants. Castle and walls and mighty towers were ruins
of an age of dreams now fortunately past. Iron rails were laid on the
streets and rusty chains with strangely shaped lanterns were removed
from the opening of narrow streets. Factories and smoke-stacks
surrounded the venerable and picturesque city as an iron frame might
surround the work of some old master.
"Modern man has got to have light and air," said Jason Philip
Schimmelweis, and clinked the coins in his trousers pocket.
VI
Daniel attended the _gymnasium_ at Ansbach. He was to complete the
course of studies that would entitle him to the reduction of his
military service to one year and then enter business. This had been
agreed upon between Jason Philip and Marian.
The boy's zeal for study was small. His teachers shook their heads.
Their considerable experience of the world had never yet offered them a
being so constituted. He listened more eagerly to the lowing of a herd
of cows and to the twittering of the sparrows than to the best founded
principles of grammatical science. Some of them thought him dull, others
malicious. He passed from class to class with difficulty and solely by
virtue of a marvellous faculty of guessing. At especially critical
moments he was saved through the help and advocacy of the music-master
Spindler.
The families who gave the poor student his meals complained of his bad
manners. The wife of Judge Hahn forbade him the house on account of his
boorish answers. "Beggars must not be choosers," she had called out
after him.
Spindler was a man who asserted quite correctly that he had been meant
for better things than wearing himself out in a provincial town. His
white locks framed a face ennobled by the melancholy that speaks of lost
ideals and illusions.
One summer morning Spindler had risen with the sun and gone for a long
walk in the country. When he reached the first barn of the village of
Dautenwinden he saw a company of strolling musicians, who had played
dance music the evening before and far into the night, and who were now
shaking from their hair and garments the straw and chaff amid which they
had slept. Above them, under the open gable of the barn, Daniel Nothafft
was lying in the straw. With an absorbed and devout expression he was
seeking to elicit a melody from a flute which one of the musicians had
loaned him.
Spindler stood still and looked up. The musicians laughed, but he did
not share in their merriment. A long while passed before the unskilful
player of the flute became aware of his teacher. Then he climbed down
and tried to steal away with a shy greeting. Spindler stopped him. They
walked on together, and Daniel confessed that he had not been able to
tear himself away from the musicians since the preceding afternoon. The
lad of fourteen was not able to express his feeling; but it seemed to
him as though a higher power had forced him to breathe the same air at
least with those who made music.
From that day on and for three years Daniel visited Spindler twice a
week, and was most thoroughly grounded in counterpoint and harmony. The
hours thus spent were both consecrated and winged. Spindler found a
peculiar happiness in nourishing a passion whose development struck him
as a reward for his many years of toneless isolation. And though the
desperateness of this passion, though the rebelliousness and aimless
wildness which streamed to him not only from the character of his pupil
but also from that pupil's first attempts at composition, gave him cause
for anxiety, yet he hoped always to soothe the boy by pointing to the
high and serene models and masters of his art.
And so the time came in which Daniel was to earn his own bread.
VII
Spindler journeyed to Eschenbach to confer with Marian Nothafft.
The woman did not understand him. She felt tempted to laugh.
Music had meant in her life the droning of a hurdy-gurdy, the singing
of a club of men, the marching of a military band. Was her boy to wander
from door to door and fiddle for pennies? Spindler seemed a mere madman
to her. She pressed her hands together, and looked at him as at a man
who was wasting trivial words on a tragic disaster. The music-master
realised that his influence was as narrow as his world, and was forced
to leave without accomplishing anything.
Marian wrote a letter to Jason Philip Schimmelweis.
One could almost see Jason Philip worrying his reddish brown beard with
his nimble fingers and the scornful twinkling of his eyes; one could
almost hear the sharp, northern inflection of his speech when his answer
to Daniel arrived: "I expected nothing else of you than that it would be
your dearest wish to be a wastrel. My dear boy, either you buckle under