The Goose Man
to Eleanore's mind. Every day the chain that bound her to him became
stronger.
Daniel was also tortured by the sight of Gertrude. He felt that she was
watching him and that she was worried about him. More than that, the
event was approaching that surrounded her with an atmosphere of
suffering and made forbearance obligatory. Her features, though haggard
and distorted, bore nevertheless an expression of mysterious
transfiguration.
After Gertrude had noticed for some time that Daniel was being estranged
from his work and that he had lost interest in everything, she decided
to have a talk with Eleanore. She did it without preparation or
tenderness.
"Can't you see that you are ruining him?" she cried.
"You want me to be ruined, do you?" asked Eleanore, in surprised dismay.
She had appreciated at once and without difficulty the complete range of
Gertrude's renunciation.
"What difference does it make about you?" replied Gertrude harshly;
"what are you getting excited about?"
This question made Eleanore's ideas of order and duty quake and totter.
She looked at her sister with incredulous eyes and in perfect silence.
It was not the happy, gentle Gertrude that had spoken, but the Gertrude
of months ago, the lonely, loveless Gertrude.
What difference does it make about you? Why are you getting excited?
That was equivalent to saying: Make short work of your life, and don't
draw out the episode in his life any longer than you have to.
Eleanore took courage to carry out the plan she had had in mind for a
long while and in which she placed her last hope.
One evening she went to Daniel and said: "I should like to go with you
to Eschenbach, Daniel, and visit your mother."
"Why do you wish to do that?" he asked in amazement. He and his mother
did not write to each other: that was due first of all to their natures,
and secondly to the condition in which each was now living. But he knew
that Eleanore received an occasional letter from Eschenbach which she
answered without consulting him. This had never seemed strange to him
until now.
A few days later she repeated her wish; Daniel granted it. They decided
upon the following Sunday for the excursion.
II
A warm, languid October sun shone over the land; the forests presented a
gorgeous array of autumnal foliage; the fields lay stretched in barren
rows; along the hills of Franconia floated clouds that looked like down
driven by the wind.
They had taken the train as far as Triesdorf; from there they went on to
Merckendorf by stage coach. The rest of the distance they walked. Daniel
pointed to a flock of geese that were trotting around on the shore of an
abandoned pond, and said: "That is our national bird; his cackle is our
music. But it doesn't sound so bad."
A peasant woman passed by, and made the sign of the cross before the
picture of a saint: "It is strange that everything has suddenly become
Catholic," said Eleanore.
Daniel nodded, and replied that when his father moved to Eschenbach a
few other Protestant families were living there, all of whom joined in
Protestant worship. Later, he said, most of them emigrated, leaving his
mother as the only Protestant, so far as he knew, in the neighbourhood.
But, Daniel remarked in the course of conversation, his mother had never
had any unpleasant experience on this account, and he himself had
frequently gone to church, primarily of course to hear the organ, though
no one had ever taken offence at this. "There is a totally different
type of people here," he added, "people who lay greater stress on
externals than we do, and yet are more secretive."
Eleanore looked at the church tower whose Spanish-green roof rose from
the valley. After a long silence she said: "I wonder whether it will be
a boy or a girl, Gertrude's baby? Oh, a girl, of course. Some day it
will be in the world, and will look at me with eyes, with real eyes. How
strange that a child of yours should look at me!"
"What is there strange about that? Many children are born, many look at
some one."
"What are you going to call it?" asked Eleanore.
"If it is blond and has blue eyes like yours, I am going to call it
Eva."
"Eva!" cried Eleanore, "no, that won't do." She herself had chosen the
name of Eva for the child of the maid at the Ruedigers'. That he should
now want to call Gertrude's child by the same name seemed so strange to
her.
"Why not Eva?" he asked. "There is something back of this objection on
your part. Women always have something up their sleeve. Out with it! Why
do you object to Eva?"
Eleanore smiled, and shook her head. She would have liked to make a
clean confession to him, but she was not certain how he would take it:
she was afraid he would turn back, enraged at her cunning. Once the
child had been born and lay there before him, it would captivate him,
and she knew it.
They had stopped and were looking out over the sunlit plains. "How alone
we are!" said Daniel.
"Everything is easier here," said Eleanore thoughtfully. "If one could
only forget where one comes from, it would be easy to be happy."
III
"I have been away for seven years," said Daniel as they passed through
the village gate. Everything seemed so ridiculously small--the Town
Hall, the Church, the Market Place, and the Eschenbach Fountain. He had
also pictured the houses and streets to himself as being cleaner and
better kept. As he passed over the three steps at the front gate, each
one of which was bulging out like a huge oyster shell, and entered the
shop with its smell of spices, the past dwindled to nothing. Marian was
so happy she could not speak. She reached one of her hands to Daniel,
the other to Eleanore. Her first question was about Gertrude.
In the room sat a four-year-old child with blond hair and marvellous
blue eyes. Its little face was of the most delicate beauty, its body was
delicately formed.
"Who is the child? To whom does it belong?" asked Daniel.
"It is your own child, Daniel," said his mother.
"My own child! Yes, for heaven's sakes--!" He blushed, turned pale,
looked first at his mother, and then at Eleanore.
"It is your own flesh and blood. Don't you ever think of Meta any more?"
"Of Meta.... Oh, I see. And you, you adopted the child? And you,
Eleanore, knew all about this? And you, Mother, took the child?" He sat
down at the table, and covered his face with his hands. "That was what
Eleanore had in mind?" he murmured timidly to himself. "And I presume
that to make the story complete the child's name is Eva ...?"
"Yes, Eva," whispered Eleanore, touched by the situation. "Go to your
father, Eva, and shake hands with him."
The child did as it had been told. Then Marian related to her son how
Eleanore had brought the child to Eschenbach, and how Meta had married
and gone to America with her husband.
Every look, every movement on the part of Marian showed how great her
love for the child was: she guarded it as the apple of her eye.
The circle of wonderful events closed in around Daniel's heart. Where
responsibility lay and where guilt, where will power ended and fate
began, Daniel could not say. To express gratitude would be vulgar; to
conceal his emotions was difficult. He was ashamed of himself in the
presence of both of the women. But when he looked at the living
creature, his shame lost all meaning. And how exalted Eleanore appeared
in his eyes just then! She seemed to him equally amiable and worthy of
respect, whether he regarded her as an active or as a sentient, feeling
woman. He almost shuddered at the thought that she was so near him; that
what she had done had been done for him filled him with humility.
The strangest of all, however, was little Eva herself. He could not see
enough of her; he was amazed at the trick nature had played: a human
being of the noblest mien and form had been born of a gawky, uncouth
servant girl. There was something divinely graceful and airy about the
child. She had well-formed hands, delicate wrists, shapely ankles, and a
clear, transparent forehead, on which a network of bluish veins spread
out in various directions. Her laughter was the purest of music; and in
her walk and gestures in general there was a rhythm which promised much
for her future poise and winsomeness.
Daniel took Eleanore through the village and out to the old town gate.
It was the time of the annual fair; Eschenbach was crowded. They
returned on this account to the more quiet streets, and finally entered
the church. The sexton came up and admitted Daniel to the choir. Daniel
sat down at the organ; the sexton pumped the bellows; Eleanore took a
seat on one of the little benches near the side wall.
Daniel's eyes became fixed; his fingers touched the keys with
supernatural power; he began to improvise. There were two motifs
following each other in close succession; both were in fifths; they were
united into one; they ran from the low to the high registers, from Hell
through the World to Heaven. A hymn crowned the improvised composition.
He stood with Eleanore for a long while in the stillness. The songs
echoed from the lofty arches. It seemed to both of them that the blood
of the one was flowing into the body of the other. Incidents of the past
faded from their memory; they seemed to have completed a long journey;
there was no voice to remind them of their return; they were completely
liberated from duties and made immune from care.
IV
Eleanore was to sleep with Marian and Eva; Daniel was to have his old
room. He showed it to Eleanore; they stepped to the window and looked
out. They saw Eva down in the yard dancing back and forth barefooted on
a wooden balustrade. She kept her equilibrium by holding out her arms.
The grace of her movements was so fairy-like that Daniel and Eleanore
smiled at each other in astonishment.
After dinner Daniel went out in front of the house; Marian and Eleanore
sat for a while at the window; the light of the lamp shone behind them.
Later they came out into the street and joined Daniel. Marian, however,
was uneasy on account of the child. She said that Eva had been restless
all day and might cry for her. "Stay out just as long as you like; I
will leave the door open," she said, and went back.
Daniel and Eleanore returned to the fair. It was still early in the
evening, but the crowd had disappeared. They sauntered around among the
booths, and stopped to listen to the harangue of a mountebank or to
watch peasant boys shooting at figures of various kinds and a glass ball
that danced on a jet of water. There was a sea of red and green
lanterns; sky-rockets were hissing into the air from the rampart;
musicians were playing in the cafes, while hilarious tipplers sang or
hooted as the spirit moved them.
They came to a grass plot, the sole illumination of which was the light
from a circus wagon. On the steps of the wagon sat a man in tricot
holding the head of a black poodle between his knees.
"Those were the last inhabitants of the earth," said Daniel, after they
had crossed the square. The noise died away, the gaudy lights
disappeared.
"How far are you going?" asked Eleanore, without the remotest trace of
fear in her voice.
"I am going on until I am with you," was the quick reply.
The indistinct outline of a bridge became visible; under it the water
flowed noiselessly. The path had a yellowish shimmer; there were no
stars in the heavens. Suddenly the path seemed to come to an end; at the
end of it were trees there that seemed to be moving closer and closer
together; it became darker and darker; they stopped.
"We have told each other our whole story," said Daniel. "In the way of