The Goose Man
In the room Eleanore whispered in a heavy, anxious tone: "What was
that? What was that?"
VIII
Philippina Schimmelweis came to help Eleanore with the moving. At first
Eleanore was quite surprised; then she became accustomed to having her
around and found her most helpful. Jordan took no interest in anything
that was going on. The last of all his hope seemed to be shattered by
the fact that he was to move.
Philippina gradually fell into the habit of coming every day and working
for a few hours either for Eleanore or for Gertrude, so long as the
latter had anything to do in the kitchen. They became used to seeing
her, and put up with her. She tried to make as little noise as possible;
she had the mien of a person who is filling an important but
unappreciated office.
She made a study of the house; she knew the rooms by heart. She
preferred to come along toward sunset or a little later. One day she
told Eleanore she had seen a mysterious-looking person out on the hall
steps. Eleanore took a candle and went out, but she could not see any
one. Philippina insisted nevertheless that she had seen a man in a green
doublet, and that he had made a face at her.
She was particularly attracted by the rooms in the attic. She told the
neighbours that there was an owl up there. As a result of this the
children of that section began to fear the entire house, while the
chancellor's wife, who lived on the ground floor, became so nervous that
she gave up her apartment.
There was no outside door or entrance hall of any kind to Jordan's new
quarters. You went direct from the stairway into the room where Eleanore
worked and slept. Adjoining this was her father's room. People still
called him the Inspector, although he no longer had such a position.
He sat in his narrow, cramped room the whole day. One wall was out of
plumb. The windows he kept closed. When Eleanore brought him his
breakfast or called him to luncheon, which she had cooked in the tiny
box of a kitchen and then served in her own little room, he was
invariably sitting at the table before a stack of papers, mostly old
bills and letters. The arrangement of these he never changed.
Once she entered his room without knocking. He sprang up, closed a
drawer as quickly as he could, locked it, put the key in his pocket,
and tried to smile in an innocent way. Eleanore's heart almost stopped
beating.
He never went out until it was dark, and on his return he could be seen
carrying a package under his arm. This he took with him to his room.
At first Eleanore was always uneasy when she had to leave. She requested
Philippina to be very careful and see to it that no stranger entered the
house. Philippina had a box full of ribbons in Eleanore's cabinet. She
set a chair against the door leading into Jordan's room; and when her
hands were tired from rummaging around in the ribbons and her eyes weary
from looking at all the flashy colours, she pressed her ear to the door
to see if she could find out what the old man was doing.
At times she heard him talking. It seemed as if he were talking with
some one. His voice had an exhortatory but tender tone in it. Philippina
trembled with fear. Once she even pressed the latch; she wanted to open
the door as quietly as possible, so that she might peep in and see what
was really going on. But to her vexation, the door was bolted on the
other side.
For Gertrude she did small jobs and ran little errands: she would go to
the baker or the grocer for her. Gertrude became less and less active;
it was exceedingly difficult for her to climb the stairs. Philippina
took the place of a maid. The only kind of work she refused to do was
work that would soil her clothes. Gertrude's shyness irritated her; one
day she said in a snappy tone: "You are pretty proud, ain't you? You
don't like me, do you?" Gertrude looked at her in amazement, and made no
reply; she did not know what to say.
Whenever Philippina heard Daniel coming, she hid herself. But if he
chanced to catch sight of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders at the
"frame," as he contemptuously called her. It seemed to him that it would
be neither wise nor safe to mistreat her. He felt that it was the better
part of valour to look with favour on her inexplicable diligence, and
let it go at that.
Once he even so completely overcame himself that he gave her his hand;
but he drew it back immediately: he felt that he had never touched
anything so slimy in his life; he thought he had taken hold of a frog.
Philippina acted as if she had not noticed what he had done. But
scarcely had he gone into his room, when she turned to Gertrude with a
diabolic glimmer in her eyes, and, making full use of her vulgar voice,
said: "Whew! Daniel's kind, ain't he? No wonder people can't stand him!"
When she saw that Gertrude knit her brow at this exclamation, she
wheeled about on the heels of her clumsy shoes, and screamed as if the
devil were after her: "Oi, oi, Gertrude, Gertrude, oi, oi, the meat's
burning! The meat's burning."
It was a false alarm. The meat was sizzling quite peacefully in the pan.
IX
Late in the afternoon of a stormy day in June Daniel came home from the
last rehearsal of the "Harzreise," tired and out of humour. The
rehearsals had been held in a small room in Weyrauth's Garden. He had
quarrelled with all the musicians and with all the singers, male and
female.
As he reached AEgydius Place a shudder suddenly ran through his body. He
was forced to cover his eyes with his hands and stand still for a
moment; he thought he would die from longing for a precious virginal
possession which he had been so foolish as to trifle away.
He went up the steps, passed by his own apartment, and climbed on up to
the apartment of Inspector Jordan and his daughter Eleanore.
His eye fell on the board partition surrounding the stove and the copper
cooking utensils that hung on the wall. There sat Eleanore, her arm
resting on the window sill, her head on her hand: she was
meditating--meditating and gaining new strength as she did so. Her face
was turned toward the steep fall of a roof, the century-old frame-work,
grey walls, darkened window panes and dilapidated wooden galleries,
above which lay stillness and a rectangular patch of sky that was then
covered with clouds.
"Good evening," said Daniel, as he stepped out of the darkness into the
dimly lighted room. "What are you doing, Eleanore, what are you thinking
about?"
Eleanore shuddered: "Ah, is it you, Daniel? You show yourself after a
long while? And ask what I am thinking about? What curiosity! Do you
want to come into my room?"
"No, no, sit perfectly still," he replied, and prevented her from
getting up by touching her on the shoulder. "Is your father at home?"
She nodded. He drew a narrow bench from which he had removed the coffee
mill and a strainer up to the serving table, and sat down as far as
possible from Eleanore, though even so they were as close together as
if they were sitting opposite each other in a cab.
"How are you making out?" she asked with embarrassment, and without the
remotest display of warmth.
"You know that I am beating a perforated drum, Eleanore." After a pause
he added: "But whatever people may do or fail to do, between us two
there must be a clear understanding: Are you going to Paris?"
She dropped her head in silence. "Well, I could go; there is nothing to
prevent me," she said, softly and with hesitation. "But you see how it
is. I am no longer as I used to be. Formerly I could scarcely picture
the happiness I would derive from having some one there in whom I could
confide and who would be interested in me. I would not have hesitated
for a moment. But now? If I go, what becomes clear from my going? And if
I stay here, what will be clear? I have already told you, Daniel, that I
don't understand you. How terrible it is to have to say that! What do
you want now? How is all this going to come out?"
"Eleanore, do you recall Benda's last letter? You yourself brought it to
me, and after that I was a different person. He wrote to me in that
letter just as if he had never heard of Gertrude, and said that I should
not pass you by. He wrote that we two were destined for each other, and
neither for any one else in the world. Of course you recall how I acted
after reading the letter. And even before that: Do you remember the day
of the wedding when you put the myrtle wreath on? Why, I knew then that
I had lost everything, that my real treasure had vanished. And even
before that: Do you recall that I found that Fraeulein Sylvia von Erfft
had your complexion, your figure, your hair, and your hands? And even
before that: When you went walking with Benda in the woods, I walked
along behind, and took so much pleasure in watching you walk, but I
didn't know it. And when you came into the room there in the Long Row,
and caressed the mask and sat down at the piano and leaned your head
against the wood, don't you recall how indispensable you were to me, to
my soul? The only trouble is, I didn't know it; I didn't know it."
"Well, there is nothing to be done about all that: that is a by-gone
story," said Eleanore, holding her breath, while a blush of emotion
flitted across her face only to give way to a terrible paleness.
"Do you believe that I am a person to be content with what is past?
Every one, Eleanore, owes himself his share of happiness, and he can get
it if he simply makes up his mind to it. It is not until he has
neglected it, abandoned it, and passed it by, that his fate makes a
slave out of him."
"That is just what I do not understand," said Eleanore, and looked into
his face with a more cheerful sense of freedom. "It wounds my heart to
see you waging a losing battle against self-deception and ugly defiance.
We two cannot think of committing a base deed, Daniel. It is impossible,
isn't it?"
Daniel, plainly excited, bent over nearer to her: "Do you know where I
am standing?" he asked, while the blue veins in his temples swelled and
hammered: "Well, I'll tell you. I am standing on a marble slab above an
abyss. To the right and left of this abyss are nothing but blood-thirsty
wolves. There is no choice left to me except either to leap down into
the abyss, or to allow myself to be torn to pieces by the wolves. When
such a being as you comes gliding along through the air, a winged
creature like you, that can rescue me and pull me up after it, is there
any ground for doubt as to what should be done?"
Eleanore folded her arms across her bosom, and half closed her eyes: "Ah
no, Daniel," she said in a kindly way, "you are exaggerating, really.
You see everything too white and too black: A winged creature, I? Where,
pray, are my wings? And wolves? All these silly little people--wolves?
Oh no, Daniel. And blood-thirsty? Listen, Daniel, that is going quite
too far; don't you think so yourself?"
"Don't crush my feelings, Eleanore!" cried Daniel, in a suppressed tone
and with passionate fierceness: "Don't crush my feelings, for they are
all I have left. You are not capable of thinking as you have just been
talking, you cannot think that low, you are not capable of such languid,
ordinary feelings. The over-tone! The over-tone! Think a little! Can't
you see them gritting their teeth at me? Can't you hear them howling day
and night? Can you possibly say that they are kind or compassionate? Or
are they willing to be good and great when one comes? Do you have
confidence in a single one of them? Have they not even dragged your good
name into the mire? Are any of the things that are sacred to you and to
me sacred to them? Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch