The Goose Man
was born to do lofty, the loftiest, deeds and who passed by the base and
evil in men in silence; who knew that he had been chosen but was obliged
to renounce the privilege of ruling; who was always in full armour,
ready to defend a threatened sanctuary.
Of such a man, of such a knight and warrior, she had dreamt even when a
child. For although she looked at things and circumstances with the eyes
of truth, her soul had always been full of secret dreams and visions.
Back of her unceasing and unfading activity the genii of romanticism had
been spinning their bright-coloured threads; it was they that had formed
the glass case in which she had lived for so long, impervious to the
touch of mortal hand, immune to the flames of love.
The morning following that night she explained to her friend that she
was going home. Martha tried in vain to get her to stay: she was almost
ill with longing.
Martha let her go; she had the very saddest of thoughts concerning
Eleanore's future; for the unhappy incidents of that unhappy home had
reached Martha's sensitive ears. She did not worry because of moral
principles; she was not that kind of a woman. She worried over Eleanore
out of genuine affection: it pained her to know that she could no longer
admire Eleanore.
X
In the meanwhile Daniel had told his wife that a child of his was living
with his mother in Eschenbach, and that he had known nothing about it
until Eleanore took him over there. He told her the child's name and how
old it was and who its mother was, and gave her a detailed description
of that celebrated New Year's Night on which he had embraced the maid.
He told her how he had stood out in front of her house that night and
longed for her with all his senses, and how he felt, when he looked at
little Eva, as if Providence had only seemed to use the body of a
strange woman, and that Eva was in reality Gertrude's own child.
To this Gertrude replied: "I never want to see that child."
"You will be ashamed of having made this remark once you do see the
child," replied Daniel. "You should not be envious of a creature whom
God brought into the world so that the world may be more beautiful."
"Don't speak of God!" said Gertrude quickly and with uplifted hand.
Then, after a pause, during which Daniel looked at her angrily, she
added with a painful smile: "The very idea: I, jealous, envious! O no,
Daniel."
The way she pressed her hands to her bosom convinced Daniel, and quite
emphatically too, that she did not know the feeling of envy or jealousy.
He said nothing, but remained in her room for an unusually long while.
When she was cutting bread, she let the knife fall. He sprang and picked
it up for her. He had never done this before. Gertrude looked at him as
he bent over. Her eyes became dim, flared up, and then became dim again.
"Don't speak of God!" Somehow Daniel could not get these words out of
his mind.
When Eleanore returned she was terrified at the expression on Daniel's
face. He seemed dazed; his eyes were inflamed as though he too had not
been able to sleep; he could hardly talk. Finally he demanded that she
swear to him never to go away again.
She hesitated to take an oath of this kind, but he became more and more
insistent, and she took it. He threw his arms about her with passionate
impetuosity; just then the door opened, and Gertrude stood on the
threshold. Daniel hastened to her, and wanted to take her by the hand;
but she stepped back and back until she reached her bedroom.
It was evening; covers were laid for four: Jordan was to take dinner
with them that evening. He came down promptly; Eleanore brought in the
food; but Gertrude was nowhere to be found. Eleanore went in to her. She
was sitting by the cradle, combing her hair with slow deliberation.
"Won't you eat with us, Gertrude?" asked Eleanore.
Gertrude did not seem to hear her. In a few minutes she got up, walked
over to the mirror on the wall, pressed her hair with the palms of her
hands to her two cheeks, and looked in the mirror with wide-opened eyes.
"Come, Gertrude," said Eleanore, rather timidly, "Daniel is waiting."
"That they are in there again," murmured Gertrude, "it seems like a
sin." She turned around, and beckoned to Eleanore.
Eleanore went over to her in perfect obedience. Gertrude threw her arms
around her neck until her left temple touched Eleanore's right one with
only her hair hanging between them like a curtain. Gertrude again looked
in the mirror; her eyes became rigid; she said: "Oh yes, you are more
beautiful, much more beautiful, a hundred times more beautiful."
Just then the child began to stir, and since Gertrude was still standing
immovable before the mirror, Eleanore went to the cradle. Hardly had
Gertrude noticed what she had done, when she rushed out and cried with
terrifying rudeness: "Don't touch that child! Don't touch it, I say!"
She then went up, snatched the child from the cradle, and went back to
her bed with it, saying gently and yet threateningly: "It belongs to me,
to me and to no one else."
Since this incident, Eleanore knew that a fearful change had come over
her sister. She did not know whether other people noticed it; she did
not even know whether Daniel was aware of it. But she knew it, and it
frightened her.
One afternoon, about sunset, Eleanore came in and found Gertrude on her
knees in the hall scrubbing the floor. "You shouldn't do that,
Gertrude," said Eleanore, "you are not strong enough for that kind of
work yet."
Gertrude made no reply; she kept on scrubbing.
"Why don't you dress better?" continued Eleanore; "Daniel does not like
to see you going about in that ugly old brown skirt. Believe me, it
makes him angry."
Gertrude straightened up on her knees, and said with disconcerting
humility: "You dress up; it is not well for two to look so nice. What
shall I do?" she asked, and let her head sink. "You wear your gold chain
and the corals in your ears. That pleases me; that is the way it should
be. But I have no gold chain; I have no corals. If I had them, I
wouldn't wear them; and if I wore them, it would not be right."
"Ah, Gertrude, what are you talking about?" asked Eleanore.
The ringing of the church bells could be heard in the hall. Gertrude
folded her hands in prayer. There was a stern solemnity in her action.
In her kneeling position she looked as though she were petrified.
Eleanore went into the room with a heavy heart.
XI
Through the dividing walls Daniel and Eleanore were irresistibly drawn
to each other. They accompanied each other in their thoughts; each
divined the other's wishes and feelings. If he came home in a bad
humour, if she was anxious and restless, they both needed merely to sit
down by each other to regain their peace.
If Daniel's power of persuasion was great, Eleanore's example was
equally great. A dish would displease Daniel. Eleanore would not only
eat it, but would praise it; and Daniel would then eat it too, and like
it. Gertrude had prepared the food, and Eleanore felt it was her duty to
spare her sister as much humiliation as possible. But Gertrude did not
want to be treated indulgently. She would lay her knife and fork aside,
and say: "Daniel is right. It is not fit to eat." She would get up and
go into the kitchen and make a porridge that would take the place of the
inedible dish. That was the way she acted: she was always resigned,
diligent, and quiet; she made every possible effort to do her duty.
Daniel and Eleanore looked at each other embarrassed; but their
embarrassment was transformed in time into mutual ecstasy: they could
not keep from looking at each other.
There was nothing of the seducer in Daniel's sexual equipment. On the
other hand he was dependent to a very high degree upon his wishes and
desires; and in his passionate obstinacy he not infrequently lacked
consideration. Eleanore however possessed profound calmness, cheerful
certainty, and a goodly measure of indulgence; and she knew exactly how
to make use of these traits. The claims that were made on her patience
and moderation would have harassed a heart steeled in the actualities of
politics and flooded with worldly experiences. She however found a safe
and unerring guide in the instincts of her nature, and was never tired.
The trait in her to which he took most frequent and violent exception
was what he called her plebeian caution; she seemed determined to pay
due and conventional respect to appearances. He did not wish to lay
claim to the hours of his love as though they were a stolen possession;
he did not wish to sneak across bridges and through halls; he did not
wish to whisper; he did not wish to lie in wait for a secret tryst; he
rebelled at the thought of coming and going in fear and trembling.
There is not the slightest use to investigate all the secrecies between
Daniel and Eleanore. It will serve no useful end to infringe with
unskilled hand on the work of the evil spirit Asmodeus, who makes walls
transparent and allows his devotees to look into bed chambers. It would
be futile to act as the spy of Daniel and show how he left the attic
room in the dead of night and crept down the stairs in felt slippers. We
have no desire to hear of Eleanore's pangs of conscience and her
longings, her flights, her waiting in burning suspense; to relate how
she endeavoured to avert the inevitable to-day and succumbed to-morrow
would be to tell an idle tale. It is best to overlook all these things;
to draw a curtain of mercy before them; for they are so human and so
wholly without a trace of the miraculous.
It will be enough to touch upon a single night on which Daniel went to
Eleanore's room and said: "I have never yet seen you as a lover sees his
beloved." Eleanore was sitting on the edge of her bed, trembling. She
blew out the candle. Daniel heard the rustling of her clothes. She went
up to the stove and opened the front draft door. There was a red hot
coal fire in the stove. She stood before him with the purple glow of the
burning coals upon her body, slender, delicate, nude. Her figure,
peculiarly beautiful, was filled with the most harmonious of
inspiration; it was ensouled. And since the play of her limbs, as they
became conscious of the light, was suddenly stiffened with shame,
Eleanore bent her head over to the wall where the mask of Zingarella,
which he had given her, was hanging. She took it down, and held it with
both hands so that the purple glow from the stove fell also on it. As
she did this she smiled in a way that cut Daniel to the very heart:
something eternal came over him; he had a premonition of the end; he
feared fate.
At the same time Gertrude rose up in her bed, and stared with eyes as
if she were beholding, who knows whom? at the door. After she had stared
for a long while, she got up, opened the door, went out into the hall
without making the slightest noise, came back, went out again, came back
again, and got in bed, left the door open, sat upright and gazed at the
closed door across the hall behind which she knew Daniel and Eleanore
were. Her hair hung down in two long braids on either side of her head.
Her pale face in this frame of black hair above it and on both sides of
it looked like a wax figure in an old black frame.
Of the pictures that were being formed in her mind and soul, there was
not a single twitching of the muscles to indicate what they looked like.
For her the entire world lay behind that door. It seemed to her that she
could no longer endure the knowledge she had of what was taking place.
In her maddened imagination she saw women stealing through the halls of
the house; in every corner there was a woman, and with every woman there