The Goose Man
careful, my friend, or Gertrude will swoon."
Daniel asked if they were all well. Benno replied that there was no
lack of good health, though some of the family were a little short of
change. Then he laughed again. He spoke of his father, said the old
gentleman was not getting along very well, that he was having quite a
little trouble to get anything to do, but then what could be expected
with a man of his age, and the competition and the hard times! Daniel
asked if Eleanore was at home. No, she was not at home: she had gone on
a visit with Frau Ruebsam over to Pommersfelden, and planned to stay
there for a few weeks. "Well, I'll have to be hurrying along," said
Benno, "my fraternity brothers are waiting for me."
"Good gracious! Do you have fraternity brothers too?"
"Of course! They are the spice of my life! We have a holiday to-day: The
King's funeral. Well, God bless you, Herr Kapellmeister, I must be
going."
Daniel went up and rang the bell; Gertrude came to the door. It was
dark; each could see only the outline of the other.
"Oh, it's you, Daniel!" she whispered, happy as happy could be. She came
up to him, and laid her face on his shoulder.
Daniel was surprised at the regularity of his pulse. Yesterday the mere
thought of this meeting took his breath. Now he held Gertrude in his
arms, and was amazed to find that he was perfectly calm and composed.
In the room he led her over to the lamp, and looked at her for a long
while, fixedly and seriously. She grew pale at the sight of him: he was
so strange and so terrible.
Then he took her by the hand, led her over to the sofa, sat down beside
her, and told her of his plans. Her wishes and his tallied exactly. He
wanted to get married within four weeks. Very well; she would get
married.
He found her the same unqualifiedly submissive girl. In her eyes there
was an expression of fatal docility; it terrified him. There was no
cowardly doubt in her soul; her cool hand lay in his and did not twitch.
With her hand her whole soul, her whole life, lay in his hand. He wanted
to raise some doubt in her mind: he spoke in a down-hearted tone of his
future prospects; he said that there was very little hope of his ever
winning recognition from the world for his compositions.
"What is the good of recognition?" she asked. "They can take nothing
from you, and what they give you is clear gain."
He became silent. The feeling of her worth to him swept like a fiery
meteor through the heaven of his existence.
The statement that they were going to remain in Nuremberg made her
happy, particularly because of her father. She said there was a small
apartment for rent on AEgydius Place, three rooms, a very quiet
neighbourhood. They went over to the window; Gertrude showed him the
house. It was close to the church, right where the Place makes a turn.
Jordan came in, and welcomed Daniel with a long handshake. His hair had
become greyer, he walked with more of a stoop, and his clothes showed
traces of neglect.
When he heard what Daniel and Gertrude were planning to do, he shook his
head: "It is a bad year, children. Why are you in such a hurry? Both of
you are still young."
"If we were older, we would have less courage," replied Daniel.
Jordan took a seat, and buried his face in his hands. In course of time
he looked up, and said that three years ago he had only eight thousand
marks in the bank; that hard times had forced him to draw on this sum to
keep the house going; and that to-day there was hardly a third of it
left. Two thousand marks was all he could give Gertrude as a dowry; with
that they would have to be satisfied, and get along as well as they
could.
"We don't need any more," said Daniel; "as a matter of fact I did not
expect that much. Now I haven't a care in the world; I am ready for
anything."
A bat flew in at the open window, and then quietly flew out again. It
had stopped raining. You could still hear the water trickling and
splashing down the leaders and in the pipes. There was something heavy,
portentous, in the air of this June evening.
XIV
At first Daniel had received small bits of news from England about
Benda, but for a year and a half he had not heard a word. When Eleanore
returned from Pommersfelden in July, she told him that she had received
a letter from Benda in April, and that she had sent him this letter when
he was at Naumburg. Daniel, however, had never received it, and the
investigations which he made proved fruitless.
Benda's mother was not in the city; she was living with relatives in
Worms, but had kept her apartment at Herr Carovius's.
Frau von Auffenberg was at Bad Ems, and did not plan to return until
September. Daniel looked up old friends, and rebound the ties of former
days. He also succeeded in getting a number of students to tutor, an
occupation that netted him a little spending money.
He had to attend to a great deal of business for which he was quite
unfit. He had imagined that he could get married just as he might go to
a shop and buy something: he would not make any noise, nor would it take
much time. He had a hundred moods, a hundred objections, a hundred
grimaces. The apartment on AEgydius Place was already rented. It
embittered him to think that in order to live with a person you loved,
you had to have tables, beds, chairs, cupboards, lamps, glasses, plates,
garbage cans, water pails, window cushions, and a thousand and one other
foolish objects.
There was a great deal of talk in the city about the marriage. The
people said they did not know what Jordan could be thinking of. They
were convinced that he was in desperate financial straits if he would
marry his daughter to an impecunious musician.
Daniel found everything hard: every day was his Day of Judgment. A
melody was gnawing at his heart, trying to take on a pure and finished
form. Freedom sounded in his ears with voices from above; his quiet
fiancee begged for comradeship. The task to which he had dedicated
himself demanded loneliness; then his blood carried him along and away,
and he became like wax, but wild.
He would rush to Jordan's house, enter the living room, his hair all
dishevelled, sit down where the two sisters were working on Gertrude's
trousseau, and never utter a syllable until Gertrude would come up to
him and lay her hand on his forehead. He thrust her back, but she smiled
gently. At times, though none too frequently, he would take her by the
arms and pull her down to him. When he did this, Eleanore would smile
with marked demureness, as if it were not right for her to see two
people in love.
There was a second-hand baby grand piano in Jordan's living room. Daniel
played on it in the evening, and the sisters listened. Gertrude was like
a woman wrapt in peaceful slumber, her every wish having been fulfilled,
with kindly spirits watching over her. Eleanore, however, was wide
awake; she was awake and meditating.
XV
The day of the wedding arrived. At half past nine in the morning, Daniel
appeared in Jordan's house. He wore an afternoon suit and a high hat!
He was vexed, and villanous to behold, a picture of misery.
Benno, the man of the world, was forced to leave the room. No sooner was
he outside than he laughed so heartily that he fell into a clothes
basket. He did not approve of this marriage; he was ashamed to tell his
friends about it.
Gertrude wore a plain street dress and a little virgin bonnet, then
prescribed by fashion. She sat by the table, and gazed into space with
wide-opened eyes.
Eleanore came into the room with a wreath of myrtle. "You must put this
on, Gertrude," she said, "just to please us; just to make us feel that
you are a real bride. Otherwise you look too sober, too much as though
you two were going to the recorder's office on profane business."
"Where did you get that wreath?" asked Jordan.
"I found it in an old chest; it is mother's bridal wreath."
"Really? Mother's bridal wreath?" murmured Jordan, as he looked at the
faded myrtle.
"Put it on, Gertrude," Eleanore again requested, but Gertrude looked
first at Daniel, and then laid it to one side.
Eleanore went up to the mirror, and put it on her own head.
"Don't do that, child," said Jordan with a melancholy smile.
"Superstitious people say that you will remain an old maid forever, if
you wear the wreath of another."
"Then I will remain an old maid, and gladly so," said Eleanore.
She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Daniel half unconscious
of what she was doing. The blond of her eyelashes had turned almost
grey, the red of her lips had been dotted with little spots from her
smiling, and her neck was like something liquid and disembodied.
Daniel saw all this. He looked at the Undine-like figure of the girl. It
seemed to him that he had not seen her since the day of his return, that
he had not noticed that she had become more mature, more beautiful, and
more lovely. All of a sudden he felt as if he were going to swoon. It
went through him like a flash: Here, here was what he had forgotten;
here was the countenance, the eye, the figure, the movement that had
stood before him, and he, fool, unspeakable fool, had been struck by
blindness.
Gertrude had a fearful suspicion of the experience he was going through.
She arose, and looked at Daniel in horror. He hastened up to her as if
he were fleeing, and seized her hands. Eleanore, believing she had
aroused Daniel's displeasure by some word or gesture, snatched the
myrtle wreath from her hair.
Jordan had paid no attention to these incidents. Bringing at last his
restless pacing back and forth to an end, he took out his watch, looked
at it, and said it was time they were going. Eleanore, who had displayed
a most curious disposition the whole morning, asked them to wait a
minute. Before they could find out why she wished them to wait, the door
bell rang, and she ran out.
She returned with a radiant expression on her face; Marian Nothafft
followed her. Marian composed herself only with extreme difficulty. Her
eyes roamed about over the circle of people before her, partly as if she
were frightened, partly as if she were looking for some one.
Mother and son stood face to face in absolute silence. That was the work
of Eleanore.
Marian said she was living with her sister Theresa; that she had arrived
the day before; and that she wished to return this evening.
"I am glad, Mother, that you could come," said Daniel with a stifled
voice.
Marian laid her hand on his head; she then went up to Gertrude, and did
the same.
After the wedding, Jordan gave a luncheon for his children. In the
afternoon they all started off in two hired coaches. Daniel had never
seen his mother so cheerful; but it was useless to ask her to prolong
her visit. While this was being discussed, she and Eleanore exchanged
knowing glances.
As evening drew on, Daniel and Gertrude betook themselves to their home.
XVI
It is night. The antiquated old square is deserted. The bell in the
church tower has struck eleven; the lights in the windows die out,
slowly, one by one.
The figure of a woman is seen coming up the alley. She is spying
anxiously about, before her and behind her. Finally she stops before the
little house in which Daniel and Gertrude live. Is it a living creature?
Is it not rather an uncanny gnome? The garments hang loose about the
unshapely body; a crumpled straw hat covers the mad-looking face; the
shoulders are raised; the fists are clenched; the eyes are glassy.
Suddenly there is a scream. The woman hastens over toward the church,
falls on her knees, and sinks her teeth with frenzied madness into the