The Goose Man
covers, Philippina cowered so witlessly at the floor. But all this was
only for the moment; all this she could take with her up into a better
world.
She bent down over the child, and kissed it, and kissed it with hot,
burning lips. A lurk of unsoftened evil crept into Philippina's face.
"Listen, Gertrude, listen: you are all Greek to me," said Philippina, "I
don't understand you."
Gertrude went over to Eleanore's room, where she stood for a while in
the dark, trembling and thinking. At times she was startled: she heard
some one walking about, and she thought the door would open. She could
scarcely endure her impatience. Suddenly she remembered the attic and
how quiet it was up there; there no one could disturb her. She decided
to go up. On her way she went into the kitchen, and took a thick cord
from a sugar-loaf.
As she passed by Daniel's room, she noticed that the door was half open.
He was still playing. Two candles were standing on the piano; Eleanore
was leaning up against the side of the piano. She had on a pale blue
dress that fell down over her beautiful body in peaceful folds.
Gertrude looked at the picture with wide-open eyes. There was an
inimitable urging, a reaching aloft, and a painful sinking-back in the
piece he was playing and in the way he was playing it. Gertrude went on
up without making the slightest bit of noise. It was dark, but she found
her way by feeling along with her hands.
XIX
After a half-hour had gone by, Philippina began to wonder where Gertrude
was. She looked in the living room, then in Eleanore's room, and then
hastened up the steps and peeped through the open door into Daniel's
room. Daniel had stopped playing and was talking with Eleanore.
Philippina turned back. On the stairs she met Jordan just then coming in
from his evening walk. She lighted a candle, and looked in the kitchen.
Gertrude was nowhere to be found.
"It is raining; there is her raincoat, and here is her umbrella, so she
can't have gone out," thought Philippina to herself. She sat down on the
kitchen table, and stared before her.
She was filled with an ugly, bitter suspicion; she scented a tragedy. In
the course of another half-hour, she got up, took the lighted candle,
and started out on a second search. Something drove her all about the
house: she went out into the hall, into the various rooms, and then back
to the kitchen.
All of a sudden she thought of the attic. It was the expression on
Gertrude's face the last time she kissed Agnes that made her think of
it. Was not the attic of any house, and particularly the one in this
house, the room that had the greatest attraction for her, and that her
light-fearing fancy invariably chose as the most desirable and befitting
place for her hidden actions?
She went up quickly and without making the least noise. Holding the
lighted candle out before her, she stared at a rafter from which hung a
human figure dressed in woman's clothes. She wheeled about, uttering a
stifled gurgle. A sort of drunkenness came over her; she was seized with
a terrible desire to dance. She raised one leg, and sank her teeth deep
into the nails of her right hand. In her convulsions she had the feeling
that some one was crying out to her in a strong voice: "Set it on fire!
Set it on fire!"
Near the chimney wall was a pile of letters and old newspapers. She fell
on her knees, and exclaimed: "Blaze! Blaze!" And then, half with horror
and half with rejoicing, she uttered a series of irrational, incoherent
sounds that were nothing more than "Hu-hu, oi-oi, hu-hu, oi-oi!"
The fire from the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps
with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to
hear.
In a few minutes the house was a bedlam. Daniel ran up the steps,
Eleanore close behind him. The women in the lower apartments came
running up, screaming for water. Daniel and Eleanore turned back, and
dragged a big pail full of water up the stairs. The fire alarm was
turned in, the men made their way into the building, and with the help
of many hands the flames were in time extinguished.
Jordan was the first to see the lifeless Gertrude. Standing in smoke and
ashes, he sobbed and moaned, and finally fell to the floor as if struck
on the head with an axe. The men carried Gertrude's body out; her
clothes were still smoking.
Philippina had vanished.
ELEANORE
I
It was all over.
The visit of the doctor was over; and so was that of the coroner. The
investigations of the various boards, including that of the fire
department, the cross-examination, the taking of evidence, the coming to
a decision--all this was over.
The cause of the fire remained unexplained; a guilty party could not be
found. Philippina Schimmelweis had sworn that the fire had already
started when she reached the attic. It was therefore assumed that the
suicide had knocked over a lighted candle in her last moments.
The crowd of acquaintances and close friends had disappeared; this was
over too. Hardened souls expressed their conventional sympathy to
Kapellmeister Nothafft. That a man who had carried his head so high had
suddenly been obliged to lower it in humility awakened a feeling of
satisfaction. The punished evil-doer again gained public favour. Women
from the better circles of society expatiated at length on the question
whether a relation which in all justice would have to be designated as a
criminal one while the poor woman was living could be transformed into a
legal one after the lapse of a certain amount of time. With pimplike
generosity and match-making indulgence they decided that it could.
The funeral was also over. Gertrude was buried in St. John's Cemetery on
a stormy day.
The preacher had preached a sermon, the mourners had stood with their
hands stuffed in their coat pockets and their furs, for it was cold. As
the coffin was lowered into the grave, Jordan cried out: "Farewell,
Gertrude! Until we meet again, my child!"
There was one man who crowded right up to the edge of the grave: it was
Herr Carovius. He looked over his nose glasses at Jordan and Daniel and
Eleanore. It seemed to him that the latter, with her pale face and her
black dress, was more beautiful than the most beautiful Madonna any
Italian or Spaniard had ever immortalised on imperishable canvas.
He turned his frightened face to one side, and came very nearly falling
over the heaped-up earth by the grave.
With regard to Daniel's conduct, Pflaum, the apothecary, had this to
say: "I should have expected more grief and sorrow from him, and not so
much sullenness."
"A hard-hearted man, an exceedingly hard-hearted man," said Herr
Seelenfromm in his grief.
Daniel was severely criticised for his discourteous treatment of the
people from the City Theatre, every one of whom had come to the funeral.
When several of them shook hands with him, he merely nodded, and blinked
his eyes behind the round glasses which he had been wearing for some
time.
Judge Kleinlein said: "He should be very grateful for the Christian
burial, for despite the evidence that was turned in, it was not
satisfactorily proved that the woman was in her right mind."
Eleanore looked into the open grave. She thought: "Guilt is being heaped
upon guilt, deep, serious guilt."
All this was over now. Daniel and Eleanore and Jordan had come back to
the house.
II
They felt lonely and deserted. Jordan shut himself up in his room. It
was rare now that he took his accustomed evening walks; his coat-sleeves
and the ends of his trouser legs had become more and more frayed. He
pined away; his hair became snow white, his walk unsteady, his eye dim.
But he was never ill, and he never complained of his fate. He never said
anything at the table; he was a quiet man.
Eleanore moved back up with her father, and Daniel took his old room
next to the dining room. There was all of a sudden so much space; he was
surprised that the going of a single person could make such a vast
difference.
Eleanore spent the whole day with little Agnes until Philippina came and
relieved her. She also did her work close to Agnes.
When she had finished her writing, she had to look after the house. She
could not cook, and had no desire to learn how, so she had a woman come
in three times a week who prepared the midday meals. Twice a week she
would prepare meals for two days, and once a week she would get them
ready for three days. She was a modest woman who worked for very little
money. The food she cooked merely needed to be heated over, and in the
evening they always had sausage and sandwiches anyhow.
It was a practical arrangement, but no one praised Eleanore for it.
At first she spent her nights in Gertrude's room with the child; she
could not stand this, however, longer than three weeks. Either she could
not sleep, or she had such terrible dreams.
Then she took to carrying the child up to her room with her and making a
little bed for it on the sofa. But the child did not sleep so well
there; Eleanore noticed that, as a result of all the excitement and hard
work, she was losing strength.
Often in the night when she would take the child to quiet it--and become
so tired and uneasy--she would make up her mind to have a talk with
Daniel. But the next morning she would find it impossible to bring up
the subject. She felt that the voice of Gertrude was admonishing her
from beyond the grave and telling her to be patient.
She felt, too, that the time was drawing near when she would succumb to
over-exertion; it made her anxious. Just then Philippina came in to
help.
III
When Jason Philip heard that Philippina was going to Jordan's daughters
every day, he told her most emphatically and repeatedly that she had to
quit it. Philippina paid not the slightest attention to him and did as
she pleased.
"I'll kill you," cried Jason Philip at the girl.
Philippina shrugged her shoulders and laughed impudently.
Jason Philip saw that a grown person was standing before him; he was
afraid of the evil look of his daughter.
It was long before he could make out what was taking her to his enemies.
Then he learned that wherever she chanced to be, at home, or with
acquaintances, or with strangers, she was spreading evil reports
concerning Daniel and his family. This tended to make him a bit more
indulgent: he too wanted to feast his ears on scandal from that quarter.
At times he would enter into a conversation with Philippina, and when
she told him the latest news he was filled with fiendish delight. "The
day will come when I will get back at that music-maker, you see if I
don't," he said.
Theresa was still confined to her bed. During his leisure hours
Willibald had to read to her, either from the newspapers or from trashy
novels. When she was alone she lay perfectly quiet and stared at the
ceiling.
The time finally came when Willibald left school. He went to Fuerth,
where he was employed as an apprentice by a manufacturer. There was no
doubt in any one's mind but that he would become one of those loyal,
temperate, industrious people who are the pride of their parents, and
who climb the social ladder at the rate of an annual increase in salary
of thirty marks.
The one-eyed Markus entered the paternal bookshop, where he soon
familiarised himself with the novels of the world from Dumas and Luise
Muehlbach to Ohnet and Zola, and with the popular sciences from Darwin to
Mantegazza. His brain was a book catalogue, and his mouth an oracle of
the tastes displayed at the last fair. But in reality he not only did