The Goose Man
face became more and more threatening.
He was squaring accounts with the woman he had been unable to bring
before his Neronic tribunal in bodily form; and all the pent-up hatred
in his heart for the musician Nothafft he was emptying into the music of
another man. The envy of the man doomed to limit his display of talent
to the appreciation of what another had created laid violent hands on
the creator; the impotence of the taster was infuriated at the cook. It
was as if a flunked and floored comedian had gone out into the woods to
declaim his part with nothing but the echo of his own voice to answer
back.
His hatred of things in general, of the customs of human society, of
order and prosperity, of state and family, of love and marriage, of man
and woman, had burst out into lurid flames. It was rare that a man had
so cut, slashed, and vilified himself as did this depatriated citizen
while playing the piano. He converted music into an orgy, a debauch, a
debasing crime.
"Enough!" he bellowed, as he closed with an ear-splitting discord. He
shut the piano with a vituperative bang, and threw himself into a
rickety leather chair.
What his inner eye saw mocks at language and defies human speech. He was
in that house over there; it lay in his power to murder his rival; he
could abuse the woman who had been denied him by the wily tricks of
circumstances; he chastised her; he dragged her from her bed of pleasure
by the hair. He feasted on her sense of shame and on the angry
twitchings of the musician, tied, bound, and gagged. He spared them no
word of calumniation. The whole city stood before his court, and
listened to the sentence he passed. Everybody stood in awe of him.
Thus it is that the citizen of the moral stature of Herr Carovius
satisfies his thirst for revenge. Thus does the Nero of our time punish
the crimes mankind commits against him in that it creates pleasures and
enjoyments of which he is not in a position to partake.
But because he felt more abandoned to-day than ever, and more fearful in
his abandonment, and because he felt so keenly the injustice done him by
the man on whom he had hung for years with dog-like fidelity, and who
avoided him to-day as one avoids an old dog that is no longer fit for
anything, he decided in the depths of his embittered soul to avenge
himself, and to do it by a means that would be quite different from
playing the piano in accordance with the rules of his own perverted
fancy.
With this decision in mind he sought sleep--at last.
XV
Jordan was now living all alone in the two attic rooms. He had asked of
his own will that he be permitted to take over the clerical work
Eleanore had been doing, and her employers had agreed to this
arrangement. He was consequently enabled to pay the rent and a little on
his board.
Daniel and Eleanore slept in the corner room in the front. Daniel moved
his piano into the living room, and did all his work there. Philippina
and Agnes remained in the room next to the kitchen.
Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancy price
for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her
flowers in Daniel's presence, or even near him; she did this in the old
room up next to the roof.
Her father would sit by her, and look at her thoughtfully. She had the
feeling that he knew of everything that had taken place between her and
Gertrude and Daniel, but, out of infinite delicacy and modesty, and also
in grief and pain, had never said a word about it. For previous to her
marriage with Daniel, he had never been with her; he had never sat and
looked at her so attentively; he had always passed by her in great
haste, and had always shown an inclination to be alone.
She had the feeling that he knew a great deal in general about men and
things, but rarely said anything because of his superior sense of
gentleness and compassion.
Daniel lived about as he did before the wedding. He would sit at the
table until late at night and write. It often happened that Eleanore
would find him sitting there with his pen in his hand, sound asleep,
when she got up early in the morning. She always smiled when this took
place, and wakened him by kissing him on the forehead.
He wrote the notes direct from his memory, from his head, just as other
people write letters. He no longer needed an instrument to try what he
had composed or to give him an inspiration for a new theme.
Once he showed Eleanore eighteen variations of the same melody. He had
spent the whole night making changes in a single composition. Eleanore's
heart was heavy: she came very nearly asking, "For whom, Daniel? For
what? The trunk up in the attic?"
She slowly began to perceive that it is not brooding reason that climbs
and conquers the steps of perfection, but moral will. Like a flash of
lightning she recognised one day the demoniacal element in this impulse,
an impulse she had been accustomed to ascribe to his everlasting
fidgeting, fumbling, and grumbling. She shuddered at the hitherto
unsuspected distress of the man, and took pity on him: he was burying
himself in darkness in order to give the world more light.
The world? What did it know about the creations of her Daniel! The big
trunk was full of _opus_ upon _opus_, and not a soul troubled itself
about all these musical treasures resting in a single coffin.
There was something wrong here, she thought. There must be a lost or
broken wheel in the clock-work of time; there was some disease among
men; some poison, some evil, some heinous oversight.
She could think of nothing else. One day she decided to visit old
Herold. At first he acted as though he would chew her to pieces, but
afterwards he became more civil, at least civil enough to listen to her.
Her features were remarkably brilliant and agile as she spoke. He
expressed himself as follows later on: "If some one had promised me
eternal blessedness on condition that I forget the picture of this
pregnant woman, as she stood before me and argued the case of Daniel
Nothafft _vs._ The Public, I would have been obliged to forego the
offer, for I could never have fulfilled my part of the agreement. Forget
her? Who would demand the impossible?"
Old Herold begged her to send him one of Daniel's latest compositions,
if she could. She said she would, and the next morning she took from the
trunk the quartette in B minor for strings, and carried it over to the
professor. He laid the score before him, and began to read. Eleanore
took a seat, and patiently studied the many little painted pictures that
hung on the wall.
The hour was up. The white-haired man turned the last leaf and struck
his clenched fist on the paper, while around his leonine mouth there was
a play partly of wrath and partly of awe. He said: "The case will be
placed on the calendar, you worthiest of all Eleanores, but I am no
longer the herald."
He walked back and forth, wrung his hands, and cried: "What structure!
What colourful tones! What a wealth of melody, rhythm, and originality!
What discipline, sweetness, power! What a splendid fellow he is! And to
think that a man like that lives right here among us, and plagues and
tortures himself! A disgrace and a shame it is! Come, my dear woman, we
will go to him at once. I want to press him to my bosom...."
But Eleanore, whose face burned with the feeling of good fortune,
interrupted him, and said: "If you do that, you will spoil everything.
It will be much better to tell me what to do. He will become more and
more obstinate and bitter, if some ray of light does not soon fall on
what he has thus far created."
The old man thought for a while: "You leave the score with me; I'll see
what I can do with it; I have an idea," he replied, after a short time
had elapsed.
Eleanore went back home full of hope.
The quartette was sent to Berlin, and placed in the hands of a man of
influence and discrimination. Some professional musicians soon became
acquainted with it and its merits. Professor Herold received a number of
enthusiastic letters, and answered them with characteristic and
becoming shrewdness. A cycle of sagas was soon afloat in Berlin
concerning the habits and personality of the unknown master. It was said
that he was an anchorite who lived in the Franconian forests and
preached renunciation of all earthly pleasures.
In Leipzig the quartette was played before an invited audience. The
applause was quite different from what it ordinarily was in the case of
a public that is surfeited with musical novelties.
Thereby Daniel finally learned what had been done. One day he received a
letter from the man who had arranged the concert, a certain Herr
Loewenberg. The letter closed as follows: "A community of admirers is
anxious to come into possession of your compositions. They send you
their greetings at present with cordial gratitude."
Daniel could scarcely believe his own eyes; it was like magic. Without
saying a word he handed the letter to Eleanore. She read it, and looked
at him quietly.
"Yes, I am guilty," she said, "I stole the quartette."
"Is that so? Do you realise, Eleanore, what you have done to me?"
Eleanore's face coloured with surprise and fear.
"You ought to know; probably in the future you will lose interest in
such womanish wiles."
He walked back and forth, and then stepped up very close to her: "You
probably think I am an idiotic simpleton, a dullard. You seem to feel
that I am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen
once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting
and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong.
There was a period when I felt more or less like that, but that time is
no more."
He started to walk back and forth again; again he stopped: "It is not
because I think they are too good, nor is it because I am too inert or
cowardly, that I keep my compositions under lock and key. I would have
to have wheels in my head if I did not have sense enough to know that
the effect of a piece is just as much a part of it as heat is a part of
fire. Those people who claim that they can quite dispense with
recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is
no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the
world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear?
_provided_ it is a living thing."
"Well then, Daniel," said Eleanore, somewhat relieved.
"That is where the trouble lies," he continued, as though he had never
been interrupted, "it all depends on whether the piece has life,
reality, the essence of true being in it. What is the use of feeding
people with unripe or half-baked stuff? They have far too much of that
already. There are too many who try and even can, but what they create
lacks the evidence that high heaven insisted on its being created: there
is no divine _must_ about it. My imperfect creations would merely serve
as so many stumbling blocks to my perfect ones. If a man has once been
seduced by the public and its applause, so that he is satisfied with
what is only half perfect, his ear grows deaf, his soul blind before he
knows it, and he is the devil's prey forever. It is an easy matter to
make a false step, but there is no such thing as turning back with
corrective pace. It cannot be done; for however numerous the
possibilities may be, the actual deed is a one-time affair. And however
fructifying encouragement from without may be, its effects are in the
end murderous if it is allowed to drown out conscience. What I have
created in all these years is good enough so far as it goes, but it is
merely the preparatory drill to the really great work that is hovering