The Goose Man
a feeling of awe he detected a mysterious liaison between then and now:
he imagined he could hear a voice calling to him from the distant shores
of yonder world.
He laid his hand on Gertrude's hair. She interpreted the gesture as a
visible sign that his promise had been fulfilled; that this work
belonged to her; that he had created it for her, had taken it from her
heart, and was returning it to the heart from whence it came.
X
Zierfuss, the music dealer, had sent out invitations to a concert.
Daniel did not feel like going. Gertrude asked Eleanore if she would
not go with her. Daniel called for them after the concert.
Eleanore told him on the way home that she had received a letter for him
that afternoon bearing a London stamp.
"From Benda?" asked Daniel quickly.
"It is Benda's handwriting," replied Eleanore. "I was going to bring it
to you when Gertrude called for me. Wait out in the front of the house,
and I'll go in and get it."
"Take dinner with us this evening, Eleanore," said Gertrude, looking
rather uncertainly at Daniel.
"If it is agreeable to Daniel...."
"No nonsense, Eleanore, of course it is agreeable to me," said Daniel.
A quarter of an hour later Daniel was sitting by the lamp reading
Benda's letter.
The first thing his friend told him was that he was to join a scientific
expedition to the Congo, and that his party would follow almost exactly
the same route that had been taken by the Stanley Expedition when it set
out to look for Emin Pascha.
Benda wrote: "This letter then, my dear friend, is written to say
good-bye for a number of years, perhaps forever. I feel as if I had been
born anew. I have eyes again; and the ideas that fill my brain are no
longer condemned to be stifled in the morass of imprisoned colleagues,
loyal and inimical. To labour in nature's laboratory will make me forget
the wrongs I have suffered, the injustice that has been done me. Hunger
and thirst, disease and danger will of course have to be endured; they
are the effects of those crimes of civilisation that spare the body
while they poison the mind and soul."
Further on Benda wrote: "I am bound to my home by only two people, my
mother and you. When I think of you, a feeling of pride comes over me;
every hour we spent together is indelibly stamped on my heart. But there
is one delicate point: it is a point of conscience. Call it, so far as I
am concerned, a chip; call it anything you please. The fact is I have
had a Don Quixotic run in, and I have got to defend myself."
Daniel shook his head and read on. Benda knew nothing of his marriage.
He did not even seem to know that Daniel and Gertrude had been engaged.
Or if he had known it he had forgotten it. Daniel could hardly believe
his own eyes when he came to the following passage: "My greatest anxiety
always lay in the fear that you would pass Eleanore by. I was too
cowardly to tell you how I felt on this point, and I have reproached
myself ever since for my cowardice. Now that I am leaving I tell you how
I feel about this matter, though not exactly with the sensation of
performing a belated task."
For Heaven's sake, thought Daniel, what is he trying to do to me?
"I have often thought about it in quiet hours; it gave me the same
feeling of satisfaction that I have in a chemical experiment, when the
reactions of the various elements take place as they should: what
Eleanore says is your word; what you feel is Eleanore's law."
He is seeing ghosts, cried Daniel, he is tangling up the threads of my
life. What does he mean? Why does he do it?
"Don't neglect what I am telling you! Don't crush that wonderful flower!
The girl is a rare specimen; the rarest I know. You need your whole
heart with all its powers of love and kindness to appreciate her. But if
my words reach you too late, please tear this letter into shreds, and
get the whole idea out of your mind as soon and completely as possible."
"Come, let's eat," said Gertrude, as she entered the room with a dish of
pickled herring.
Eleanore was sitting on the sofa looking at Daniel quizzically. He was
lost in thought.
Daniel looked up, and studied the two women as if they were the figures
of a hallucination: the one in dark red, the other in dark blue; minor
and major keys. The two stood side by side, and yet so far removed from
each other: they were the two poles of his world.
XI
"What has Benda got to say?" asked Gertrude hesitatingly.
"Just think, he is going to Africa," replied Daniel, with a voice as if
he were lying. "Curious, isn't it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this
time."
With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he
was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the
letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared
to them.
"Why don't you read on?" asked Eleanore, when he paused.
She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the
whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became
entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up
and liberated her.
Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore
threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet;
she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It
gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his.
"Don't you know that that is not polite?" he asked. "We have some
secrets, probably, Benda and I."
"I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings," replied
Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment.
Daniel then held the letter above the chimney of the lamp, waited until
it had caught fire, and then threw it on the floor, where it burned up.
"It is late, and father is already waiting," said Eleanore, after they
had eaten in great haste.
"I will take you home," declared Daniel. Surprised by such unusual
gallantry, Eleanore looked at him with amazement. He at once became
moody; she was still more surprised. "I can go home alone, Daniel," she
said in a tone of noticeable seriousness, "you do not need to put
yourself out for me."
"Put myself out? What do you mean? Are you one of those people who can't
keep a tune, and step on the pedal when their sentiment runs short?"
Eleanore had nothing to say.
"Put your great coat on, Daniel," said Gertrude in the hall, "it is cold
and windy out."
She wanted to help him on with it, but he threw it in the clothes press;
he was irritated.
He walked along at Eleanore's side through the deserted streets.
She had already put the key in the front door, when she turned around,
looked up in a most unhappy way, and said: "Daniel, what in the world is
the matter with you? When I look at you, a feeling of anguish and
distress comes over me. What have I done that you should act so
disagreeably toward me?"
"Oh, forget it, think about something else, don't mention the subject
any more," said Daniel, in a rough, rude voice. But the glance she fixed
on him was so stern and unpitying, so testing and so un-girl-like, so
strong and so bold, that he felt his heart grow softer. "Let us take a
little walk," he said.
For a long time they paced back and forth in perfect silence. Then she
asked him what he was working on now. He made cautious, non-committal
replies, and then suddenly he was overwhelmed with a flood of words. He
remarked that he felt at times as if he were struggling with goblins in
the dark. What gushed forth from the deepest depths of his soul, he
said, was somehow or other too noisy and blatant, and died in his hands
while he was trying to create an appropriate form for it. He said he had
no success with anything unless it was something disembodied,
incorporeal, the melody of which had thus far found an echo in no human
breast. Therefore he seemed to be groping around, without anchorage,
after sprites from the land of nowhere. And the more domineering the
order was to which he subjected his mind and his fancy, the more lost
and hopeless his earthly self seemed to be as it drifted in the chaos of
the everyday world. He remarked that heaven was in his dreams, hell in
his association with men. And how dead everything about him seemed to
be! It was all like a cemetery; it was a cemetery. His doughtiest life
was gradually transformed into a shadow and lacerated into a
monstrosity. But that he was aggrieved at men he felt full well; for
they lived more innocent lives than he, and they were more useful.
"But you have some one to hold to," said Eleanore, realising that she
was skating on thin ice, "you have Gertrude."
To this he made no reply. She waited for him to say something, and when
she saw that he did not care to make a reply of any kind, she smiled at
him as if in a last attempt to get him to tell her what was the matter.
Then all peace of mind vanished from her soul--and her face. Every time
they passed a street lamp she turned her head to one side.
"She is after all in the presence of God your wife," said Eleanore
gently and with remarkable solemnity.
Daniel looked up and listened as if greatly abashed. Speaking out into
the wind he said: "The over-tone, Eleanore; a bird twittering in the
bush. In the presence of God my wife! But in the roots the bass is
howling; it is an infernal tremolo; do you hear it?"
He laughed as if mad, and his face, with his spotted teeth, was turned
toward her. She took him by the arm, and implored him to straighten up.
He pressed her hand to his forehead, and said: "The letter, Eleanore,
the letter ...!"
"Now you see, Daniel, I knew it all along. What was in the letter?"
"I dare not tell you, otherwise my sweet over-tone will take a
somersault, become mingled with the gloomy bass, and be lost forever."
Eleanore looked at him in amazement; he had never seemed so much like a
fool to her in her life.
"Listen," he said, putting his arm in hers, "I have composed a song;
here is the way it goes." He sang a melody he had written for one of
Eichendorff's poems. In it there was a tender sadness. "While everything
is still and everybody asleep, my soul greets the eternal light, and
rests like a ship in the harbour."
They had again reached the front door; they had been strolling back and
forth for two hours.
He had an unpleasant feeling when he went up the steps of his apartment.
Gertrude was sitting where he had left her: by the clothes press. She
had wrapped his top coat about her legs, her back was leaning against
the wall, her head had sunk on her shoulder; she was asleep. She was not
awakened by his coming. Beside her stood the candle, now burned down to
the edge of the metal holder; it was spluttering. The light from it fell
on Gertrude's face, lighting it up irregularly and lending it a painful
expression.
"In the presence of God my wife," murmured Daniel. He did not waken
Gertrude until the candle had gone out. Then he did; she got up, and the
two went off in darkness to their bed room.
THE GLASS CASE BREAKS
I
Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a
time he knew she would be there.
He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when
she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her
with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red
cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.
She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for
the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started
off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came