The Goose Man
Anxious minutes passed by and nothing happened, except that each held
the hand of the other and each looked into the eyes of the other. The
silence was broken only by the crackling of the fire in the stove.
"Just at the right time," murmured the old Baron, without looking up and
as if lost in meditation, "just at the right time."
Eberhard made no reply. He stood as still, as motionless, as silent, and
with his heels as close together as if he were a young officer facing
his superior in command.
After a while he wheeled about and slowly left the room.
Sylvia was waiting in the library. In the twilight it was possible to
see only the vague outline of her body.
Eberhard took hold of her and whispered: "I really believe that I no
longer have a father."
VI
That same night the old Baron had left. He got up in the middle of the
night; at four o'clock his valet accompanied him to the station.
The next morning two letters were found lying on his writing desk: one
was addressed to Eberhard, the other to the Baroness. The latter
contained nothing more than a few words of farewell. The former was more
detailed. It expressed the Baron's satisfaction at the fact that
Eberhard, whom he welcomed as the head of the house, had returned, and
plainly indicated that all the necessary legal steps would be taken in a
very short while to give him complete authority as his heir and
successor. The letter closed with this surprising sentence: "So far as I
am personally concerned, I am planning to enter the Catholic Church, in
order to spend the remainder of my misapplied life at Viterbo in the
Dominican Convent of Della Guercia."
There was no explanation, no unusual display of feeling, no confession,
nothing but the naked fact.
The Baroness was neither surprised nor shocked. She fell into a mute,
melancholy brooding, and then said: "He never was happy, never in his
whole life. I never heard him laugh a really whole-souled laugh; and
living with him has made me forget how to laugh myself. His heart has
been from time immemorial a sort of convent, an abode of darkness, a
place of sternness. He has found his way home at last, and is probably
tired from the long journey on the way to his soul."
"Nonsense, Clotilda!" cried Frau von Erfft. "What you say about his
laughing may be true, and a man who cannot laugh is half animal. But do
you mean to tell me that an intelligent man must resort to such means to
find peace with himself and his God? A man who is under obligations to
set an example for others? Is there not enough darkness in men's heads
already? Is it necessary to put out the torches of those who stand
guard? My sense of pardon is not so elaborate. I prefer to be a child of
the world and associate with those who are regarded as heathens, and who
have given us works of light and illumination."
At these words Eberhard entered. As she looked into his face, Frau von
Erfft thought: "There is another who can't laugh."
The Baron's change of religious views caused the greatest excitement
throughout the entire country. The liberal newspapers published
fulminatory articles; flaming protests were made in the clubs against
the surreptitious propaganda of Rome. The ultramontane party leaders
rejoiced and made capital out of the marvellous return of such a sceptic
to the bosom of the Church which alone can save the souls of men: they
used the case as a bait for fresh recruits and as a means to fill the
old regulars with greater fire and enthusiasm. Through the homes blew a
breath of a tyrannical priesthood and spiritual gagging.
Eberhard adapted himself to his changed condition quickly and with but
little apparent effort: the chaos of opinions left him virtually
unmoved. To become the master of so much and so many people, and to do
it so suddenly, necessitated dignity, a clear eye, and a firm hand. His
being was in no danger from an excess of zeal or up-start conceit,
suffer though he might from too great seriousness and his preference for
a place in the shadow. Strangely enough, the abundance of his
responsibilities made him more cheerful. And where he was unable to take
his part in the world of outward unrest, Sylvia's influence interceded
and made it possible for him to do what was expected of him.
In May he accompanied her and her mother to Erfft. There they took long
walks together every day, and talked a great deal about Eleanore. At
first he spoke with noticeable reserve. But when he felt that he had
gained the confidence of his auditor, and she his, he spoke quite
candidly, so candidly in truth that Sylvia came to look upon his action
as one of inner liberation.
When he told of Eleanore's marriage to Daniel Nothafft, Sylvia
interrupted him, and asked a number of questions concerning Daniel. "Oh,
yes, he was our guest once; he is the Kapellmeister," she said. And then
she told him all about Daniel's visit at Erfft, and did it with a smile
in which there were both indulgence and re-awakened astonishment.
Her smile made the same appeal to Eberhard that Eleanore's had. And yet,
when he was in Sylvia's company, he seemed to recognise more distinctly
than ever what had drawn him with such irresistible power to Eleanore,
possibly because Sylvia was of a less ardent and forceful nature. He
could not exactly express it in words; he merely felt that it was the
unknown realm of tones, the unknown melting of melodies, the ringing
order of the music transformed into soul.
At the beginning of June, Sylvia went back to Nuremberg with Eberhard
and her parents. A few days later the betrothal took place in the
baronial residence.
VII
Herr Carovius had been paid. The consortium of silent backers had been
dissolved.
Never in the history of finance had there been a satisfied creditor
who was so unhappy as Herr Carovius. He was without a goal, and the
sign posts had been destroyed. He had received his money; so far so
good. His share of the profit was something over sixty thousand marks.
But what was this in comparison with the great noise? What comparison
was there between living in ease and the gorgeous sight of falling
stars? What attraction could the world offer him after this hopeful
affair, which had begun as a tragedy, and had increased in interest and
suspense until one was justified in believing that all the contradictory
forces in human nature were going to collide with one mighty bang, when,
in reality, the whole incident flattened out into an ordinary drama of
emotion, with the curtain going down on reconciliation all around?
But this was not the sole reason why Herr Carovius, up until this time a
most elastic figure, one of those imperturbable bachelors for whom no
hurdle was too high, suddenly felt that he was growing old. His soul was
filled with unrest; he was seeing bad omens; he feared there was going
to be a change in the weather.
He felt an inner hunger, and yet he somehow lacked appetite for his
kind of things. "Down and out, lost and no good," he sighed within. But
those who had got rich at his expense could not possibly succeed. This
much he knew.
He began to lose his hair; he became rheumatic. As soon as the
thermometer began to fall he shivered; if it rained he stayed at home.
He began to study medicine, all by himself. He took up the various
remedies of our remote ancestors. He read the works of Paracelsus, and
declared that all those who had written on medicine since Paracelsus
were quacks and poison-mixers.
His ideas with regard to music became also more and more strange and
bizarre. He had discovered an old Nuremberg composer by the name of
Staden. His opera entitled "Seelewig"--the first of all German operas,
by the way--he insisted was the very zenith of musical art, eminently
superior to Mozart and Bach. He played arias and melodies from
"Seelewig" to Dorothea.
"Now, when you can get that," he exclaimed, "when you come to the point
where I can see from your playing what is in it and at the bottom of it,
Heaven and Hell in one stroke of the bow, then, you little jackanapes,
I'm going to make you my heiress."
That was precisely what Dorothea had been longing to hear; it confirmed
her calculations and crowned her dreams. To hear these words roll from
her uncle's tongue had been her ambition; and she had spared no pains to
arrive at her goal.
Herr Carovius was not spoiled. Since the days his sister had kept house
for him, no woman had ever concerned herself about him in the least. But
at that time he was young; and he had wheedled himself into believing
that the women were merely waiting for him, that all he had to do was to
beckon to them with his finger and they would come rushing up to him in
battalions. But because he had dreaded the idea of making an unhappy
selection, and by reason of the expense of the enterprise, he had
neglected to give the necessary signal, and hence had been so generous
as to leave them in complete possession of their freedom.
He never knew until now that the soft, little hand of a woman could
bring out effects as if they had come from the touch of a magic wand.
"What a pleasant little phiz Doederlein's offspring has," he thought. And
if Dorothea, who had made him believe that she was visiting him on the
sly, though her father had given his consent long ago, chanced to remain
away for a few days, he would become wild with rage, and go into the
kitchen and chop wood merely to enjoy the sensation of destroying
something.
Moreover, the music lessons Dorothea was taking at Herr Carovius's
expense gave the girl a new conception of her art, and awakened in her a
measure of wholesome ambition. Satisfied as he was with her docility and
her progress, Herr Carovius referred to her at times as the coming
female Paganini, and pictured himself in the role of a demoniacal
impresario.
But the thing about Dorothea that struck him most forcibly and filled
him with such astonishment was her relation to mirrors.
A mirror exercised a tremendous influence on her. If she passed by one,
her face became coloured with a charming blush of desire; if she stood
before one and saw her picture reflected in it, she was filled, first
with sexual unrest, and then with retreating uncertainty. In the
brightness of her eyes there was always a longing for the mirror. Her
gait and her gestures seemed to have duties imposed on them by the
mirror; it seemed to be their task to prepare surprises. Her whole body
seemed to live in common with a spectral mirror sister, and to catch
sight of this beloved sister was her first wish, fulfilment of which she
effected as often as possible.
VIII
Dorothea had succeeded in making it clear to her father that it would be
highly advantageous to her, as the nearest relative, to show Herr
Carovius every conceivable favour. Andreas Doederlein baulked at first;
but he could not refuse recognition to the far-seeing penetration of his
daughter.
When she told him of her appearance in the baronial residence, and
mentioned the enormous sum Herr Carovius had collected with the mien of
an undaunted victor, Doederlein became serious; he stared into space and
did some hard thinking. Recalling the now superannuated feud, he
preserved the appearance of inapproachability, and said: "We will not
debase ourselves for the sake of Mammon."
A few days later, however, he said, quite of his own free will, sighing
like a man who has gone through some great moral struggle and come out
of it victorious, "Well, do as you think best, my child, but don't let
me know anything about it."
His argument, had he expressed it in so many words, would have been
something like the following: We are poor; we are living from hand to