The Goose Man
and general views of life, there was nevertheless something about the
whole situation before which he bowed. He could not have said precisely
what it was, but it seemed to be a compromise between fear and
convulsion.
As he was pondering over it all, he heard a rattling at the window. He
looked up, and saw the face of Herr Carovius pressed so tightly against
the pane that his nose was as flat as a pancake, while his glasses
looked like two opalescent grease spots on the water.
Daniel also looked up; he too saw the face of Herr Carovius, then
distorted with wrath and filled with threats. He looked at the Baron in
amazement; the latter got up and said: "You will have to pardon the
annoyance; I forgot to draw the blinds."
With that he went to the window, and pulled down the dark shade over the
face of Herr Carovius.
XII
That same night, just as Daniel was crossing the hall of his apartment,
he detected a strong scent of flowers. He had smelt them before, but
they had never seemed to be so fragrant as at present. Because of the
season of the year, the sensation was all the more pronounced and
unusual.
He sniffed around for a while, and then saw that the door to Eleanore's
room was open: her light was shining out on the stairs.
When Daniel was not at home of an evening, Eleanore always kept her door
open so that she could hear when he came in. Daniel was unaware of this;
he had never seen the light on any previous night.
He thought for a moment, then locked the door, and went up the stairs.
But Eleanore must have heard his approaching footsteps; for she stepped
hastily out into the vestibule, and said with evident embarrassment:
"Please stay downstairs, Daniel; Father is asleep. If you wish I will
come down to the living room."
She did not wait for his answer, but went into her room, got the table
lamp, and followed Daniel to the living room. Daniel closed the window,
and shook as if he were cold; for it was a cool night, and there was no
fire in the stove.
"What is this I smell?" he asked. "Have you so many flowers up in your
room?"
"Yes, I have some flowers," replied Eleanore, and blushed.
He looked at her rather sharply, but was disinclined to make any further
inquiry, or he was not interested in knowing what this all meant. He
walked around the room with his hands in his pockets.
Eleanore had sat down on a chair; she never once took her eyes off
Daniel.
"Listen, Daniel," she said suddenly, and the violin tone of her voice
lifted him from his mute and heavy meditations, "I know now what Father
is doing."
"Well, what is the old man doing?" asked Daniel distractedly.
"He is working at a doll, Daniel."
"At a doll? Are you trying to poke fun at me?"
Eleanore, whose cheeks had turned pale, began to tell her story:
"Yesterday afternoon, Father took advantage of the beautiful weather,
and went on a walk for the first time in a long while. During his
absence, I went to his room to straighten it up a little. I noticed that
the door to the large cabinet was not closed as usual, but was standing
ajar. He probably forgot to lock it. I did not suspect anything, and
knew that there was no harm in what I was going to do, so I opened the
door, and what did I see? A big doll, about the size of a four-year-old
child, a wax figure with big eyes and long, yellow hair. But there were
no clothes on it: the lower part of the back and the front from the neck
to the legs had been removed. Inside, there where a person's heart and
entrails are, was a network of wheels and screws and little tubes and
wires, all made of real metal."
"That is strange, really strange. Well?"
"He is making something," continued Eleanore, "that much is clear. But
if I could tell you how I felt when I saw the thing! I never felt so sad
in my life. I have shown him so little love, just as Fate has been so
unlovely to him. And everything--the air and the light and the people
and how one feels towards the people and how they feel towards you, all
seemed to me to be so hopelessly without love that I could not help it:
I just sat down before that doll and cried. The poor man! The poor old
man!"
"Strange, really strange," repeated Daniel.
After a while, as if conscious of his guilt, he took a seat by the
table. Eleanore however got up, went to the window, and leaned her
forehead against the glass.
"Come here to me, Eleanore," said Daniel in a changed tone of voice.
She came. He took her hand and looked into her face. "How in the world
have you been keeping the house going all this time?" he asked, viewing
the situation in the light of his guilty conscience.
Eleanore let her eyes fall to the floor. "I have done my writing, and I
have had considerable success with the flowers. I have even been able to
save a little money. Don't look at me like that, Daniel. It was nothing
wonderful I did; you have no reason to feel especially grateful to me."
He drew her down on his knees, and threw his arms around her shoulders.
"You probably think I have forgotten you," he said sorrowfully, and
looked up, "that I have forgotten my Eleanore. Forget my Eleanore? My
spirit sister? No, no, dear heart, you have known for a long while that
we have begun our common pilgrimage--for life, for death."
Eleanore lay in his arms; her face was perfectly white; her body was
rigid; her eyes were closed.
Daniel kissed her eyes: "You must hold me, keep me, even when it seems
that I have left you," he murmured.
Then he carried her in his arms through the door into his room.
"I have so longed, I have been so full of longing," she said, pressing
her lips to his neck.
XIII
Before one could realise it, winter had come, and the Place with the
Church was covered with snow.
Eleanore had gone skating; when she returned she sat down in the living
room to wait for Daniel. There she sat with her fur cap on her head,
holding her skates in her hand by the cord: she was tired--and she was
thinking.
Daniel entered the room and greeted her; she looked up, and said with a
gentle voice: "I am with child, Daniel; I found it out to-day."
He fell on his knees, and kissed the tips of her fingers. Eleanore drew
a deep breath; a smile of dream-like cheerfulness spread over her face.
The following day Daniel went to the Town Hall, and made arrangements to
have the banns posted.
Hardly had Philippina heard that Daniel and Eleanore were to get married
in February when she disappeared; she did not leave a trace of her
whereabouts behind her. Little Agnes cried in vain for her "Pina." Six
days after Philippina had left, she came back just as mysteriously as
she had gone away. She was desperately gloomy; her hair was towsled, her
clothes were wrinkled, there were no soles on her shoes; she was as
speechless as a clod, and remained so for weeks.
No one knew, nor has any one ever found out, what she did during those
six days or where she had been.
Eleanore insisted on a church wedding; this caused Daniel a great deal
of worry; it made him run many a vexatious errand. But he consented to
do as Eleanore had asked; for he did not wish to deprive her of any
pleasure she might imagine such a ceremony would give her. Eleanore made
her own white dress and her veil. Gisela Degen, a younger sister of
Martha Ruebsam, and Elsa Schneider, the daughter of the rector of the
Church of St. AEgydius, were to be her bridesmaids. Marian Nothafft and
Eva were also to come over from Eschenbach; Eleanore had already sent
them the money for the tickets.
"Help me with my sewing, Philippina," said Eleanore one evening, and
handed her silent house companion the veil, the border of which had to
be made.
Philippina took her seat opposite Eleanore, and began to sew; she was
silent. In the meanwhile, little Agnes, tottering about on the floor,
fell and began to cry in a most pitiable fashion. Eleanore hastened over
and picked the child up. Just then she heard a sound as if cloth were
being torn. She looked around, and saw that the veil had an ugly rip in
it: "You wicked thing! What do you mean, Philippina?" she exclaimed.
"I didn't do it; it tore itself," growled Philippina, taking every
precaution to see that Eleanore might not catch her cowardly eye.
"You just leave that alone! Keep your hands off of it! You will sew evil
thoughts into my veil," replied Eleanore, filled with forebodings.
Philippina got up. "Well, it's torn anyway, the veil," she said in a
defiant tone; "if harm is to come it will come; you can't keep it off by
sending me away." Philippina left the room.
The injury to the veil was not as great as Eleanore had feared. It was a
relatively easy matter to cut off the torn piece entirely, and still use
the remainder.
But from that hour Eleanore was filled with sadness: her face might be
compared to a beautiful landscape on which the first fog of autumn has
settled. It is probable that the tearing of her veil had nothing to do
with her depression: there was not a shimmer of superstition in her.
Perhaps it was merely happiness and fulfilment: it may be that she felt
the end had come, that happiness and fulfilment leave nothing more to be
desired, that life from then on would be nothing but a hum-drum
existence which does not give but only takes.
Perhaps her mind was darkened and weighed down with grief because of the
life within her body; for that which is to come sends out its rays of
melancholy just as well as that which has come and gone. What was there
to hinder a pure soul from having an inner premonition of the fate that
was in store for it? Why should this soul not learn in its dreams of the
inevitable that was not so far ahead?
It was impossible to notice any change in Eleanore; her eyes were
bright; she seemed peaceful. She would often sit before the mask of
Zingarella; she hung it with fresh flowers every day: to her the mask
was a mysterious picture of all that her own being, her own life,
embraced.
Marian Nothafft came to the wedding alone. Just as in the case of
Daniel's wedding to Gertrude, she had left the child with a neighbour.
She told Daniel and Eleanore that she could not think of taking the
child out on such a journey in the dead of winter. She mentioned Eva's
name or talked about her only in a half audible, subdued voice, a tender
smile playing gently about her lips.
Among those present at the wedding in the AEgydius Church were Judge and
Frau Ruebsam, Councillor Bock, Impresario Doermaul, Philippina
Schimmelweis, Marian Nothafft, and Inspector Jordan. On the very last
bench sat Herr Carovius; underneath one of the pillars, unseen by most
of the people in the church, stood Baron Eberhard von Auffenberg.
Philippina walked along in an ugly, crouched, cowering fashion by the
side of Jordan; had it not been that she was constantly chewing her
finger nails, one would have thought she was asleep.
As the bridal couple was marching up to the altar, the sun broke out,
and shone through the windows of the old church. The effect was
touching; for just then Eleanore raised her head, stroked her veil back
from her forehead, and caught the full light of the sun in her radiant
face.
Old Jordan had laid his forehead on the prayer-desk; his back was
quivering.
XIV
Late at night and in senseless excitement--for he was thinking of a
bridal bed that filled him with the most intense pangs of jealousy--Herr
Carovius sat in his room playing Chopin's _etude_ of the revolution. He
would begin it again and again; he struck the keys with ever-increasing
violence; the time in which he played the _etude_ became wilder and
wilder; the swing of his gestures became more and more eloquent; and his