Part 16

Sylvia was the only one he treated with consideration. As soon as Herr von Erfft mentioned her name, Daniel listened; and as soon as he had seen her, he knew that he had seen her before. It was the time he was on his journey; he was standing out at the entrance to the park; some one called to her. It seemed strange to him that he should remember this. Now he was with her, and yet he was just as much of a stranger to her as ever.

But the thing that drew him to the beautiful girl had nothing to do with this chance incident; nor was there the slightest trace of sensuousness in his feelings. It was all a sort of dream-like sympathy, similar to the quest of memory in search of a forgotten happiness. It was a vaguer and more plaguing sensation than the one that bound him so inviolably to Gertrude; it was more sorrow than joy, more unrest than consciousness.

This forgotten happiness slumbered deep down in his soul; it had been washed away by the waves of life. It was not Sylvia herself; it was perhaps a movement of her hand: where had he known this same movement before? It was the way she tossed her head back; it was her proud look, the blue of her eyes—but where had he seen all this before?

Forgotten, forgotten....

XII

Just as everything was in full swing, just as they had decorated the buildings and arranged the Herrenhaus, the news came of the death of King Ludwig of Bavaria. The newspapers bore a broad black margin, and were crowded with details concerning the tragedy at the Starnbergersee. The entire country, including the family of Herr von Erfft, mourned the loss of the art-loving monarch genuinely and for a long while.

Of an operatic performance there could be no thought. The Chancellor cancelled his engagement, and the young men who had assembled for the rehearsals went quietly home. Herr von Erfft gave Daniel a considerable purse with which he might recompense his musicians for their trouble, and, not wishing to treat Daniel himself as though he were an ordinary mechanic, he invited him to spend a few more days on his estate.

Daniel did not decline; he had not in truth given one minute’s thought to where he would go when he left.

After he distributed the present from Herr von Erfft among the musicians and discharged them, he took a long walk in the woods. He ate a frugal meal in a village restaurant, and then sauntered around until evening. When he returned, he found his hosts sitting at the table. He neglected to beg their pardon; Frau Agatha looked at her husband and smiled, and told the maids to bring in something for the Herr Kapellmeister. Sylvia had a book in her hand and was reading.

Daniel was a trifle ill at ease; he merely took a bite here and there. When Frau von Erfft left the table, walked over to the window, and looked out into the cloudy sky, Daniel got up, went into the adjoining room, and sat down at the piano.

He began to play Schubert’s “Song to Sylvia.” Having finished the impetuous, heart-felt song, he struck up a variation, then a second, a third, and a fourth. The first was melancholy, the second triumphant, the third meditative, the fourth dreamy. Each was a hymn to forgotten joy.

Herr von Erfft and Agatha were standing in the open door. Sylvia had sat down close beside him on a tabourette; there was a pleasing, far-away look in her eyes, riveted though they were to the floor.

He suddenly stopped, as if to avoid both thanks and applause. Sylvester von Erfft took a seat opposite him, and asked him in a most kindly tone whether he had any definite plans for the immediate future.

“I am going back to Nuremberg and get married,” said Daniel. “My fiancée has been waiting for me for a long time.”

Herr von Erfft asked him whether he was not afraid of premature marriage bonds. Daniel replied rather curtly that he needed some one to stand between him and the world.

“You need some one to act as a sort of buffer,” said Frau Agatha sarcastically. Daniel looked at her angrily.

“Buffer? No, but a guardian angel if such a creature can shield me from rebuffs,” said Daniel, even more brusquely than he had spoken the first time.

“Why do you wish to settle down and live in Nuremberg, a city of such one-sided commercial interests?” continued Herr von Erfft, with an almost solicitous caution. “Would you not have a much better opportunity as a composer in one of the great cities?”

“It is impossible to separate the daughter from her father,” replied Daniel with unusual candour. “It is impossible. Nor is it possible to get the old man to tear himself away from his former associations. He was born and reared there. And I do not wish to live alone any longer. Everybody needs a companion; even the miner digs with a better heart, when he knows that up on the earth above his wife is preparing the soup. I must say, however, that I am not so much taken up with the soup phase of married life: it is the dear little soul that will belong to me that interests me.”

He turned around, and struck a minor chord.

“And even if everything were different, your great cities would not attract me,” he began again, wrinkling his face in a most bizarre way. “What would I get out of them? Companions? I have had enough of them. Music I can study at home. I can summon the masters of all ages to my study. Fame and riches will find their way to me, if they wish to. The dawn is missed only by those who are too indolent to get up, and real music is heard by all except the deaf. God attends to everything else; man has nothing to do with it.”

He struck another chord, this time in a major key.

Herr von Erfft and his wife looked at him with evident joy and sympathy. Sylvia whispered something to her mother, who then said to Daniel: “I have a sister living in Nuremberg, Baroness Clotilde von Auffenberg. From the time she was a mere child she was an ardent lover of good music. If I give you a letter of introduction to her, I am quite sure she will welcome you with open arms. She is unfortunately not in the best of health, and a heavy fate is just now hanging over her; but she has a warm heart, and her affections are trustworthy.”

Daniel looked down at the floor. He thought of Gertrude and his future life with her, and murmured a few words of gratitude. Frau von Erfft went at once to her desk, and wrote a detailed letter to her sister. When she had finished it, she gave it to Daniel with a good-natured smile.

The next morning he left the castle with the feeling of regret that one experiences on leaving the dwelling place of peace and separating from noble friends.

XIII

The streets of Nuremberg were hung with black banners. It was raining. Daniel took a cheap room in The Bear.

It had already grown dark when he started to Jordan’s. He met Benno at the front door. He did not recognise the foppishly-dressed young man, and was on the point of passing by without speaking to him; but Benno stopped, and laughed out loud.

“Whew, the Herr Kapellmeister!” he cried, and his pale face, already showing the signs of dissipation, took on a scornful expression. “Be careful, my friend, or Gertrude will swoon.”

Daniel asked if they were all well. Benno replied that there was no lack of good health, though some of the family were a little short of change. Then he laughed again. He spoke of his father, said the old gentleman was not getting along very well, that he was having quite a little trouble to get anything to do, but then what could be expected with a man of his age, and the competition and the hard times! Daniel asked if Eleanore was at home. No, she was not at home: she had gone on a visit with Frau Rübsam over to Pommersfelden, and planned to stay there for a few weeks. “Well, I’ll have to be hurrying along,” said Benno, “my fraternity brothers are waiting for me.”

“Good gracious! Do you have fraternity brothers too?”

“Of course! They are the spice of my life! We have a holiday to-day: The King’s funeral. Well, God bless you, Herr Kapellmeister, I must be going.”

Daniel went up and rang the bell; Gertrude came to the door. It was dark; each could see only the outline of the other.

“Oh, it’s you, Daniel!” she whispered, happy as happy could be. She came up to him, and laid her face on his shoulder.

Daniel was surprised at the regularity of his pulse. Yesterday the mere thought of this meeting took his breath. Now he held Gertrude in his arms, and was amazed to find that he was perfectly calm and composed.

In the room he led her over to the lamp, and looked at her for a long while, fixedly and seriously. She grew pale at the sight of him: he was so strange and so terrible.

Then he took her by the hand, led her over to the sofa, sat down beside her, and told her of his plans. Her wishes and his tallied exactly. He wanted to get married within four weeks. Very well; she would get married.

He found her the same unqualifiedly submissive girl. In her eyes there was an expression of fatal docility; it terrified him. There was no cowardly doubt in her soul; her cool hand lay in his and did not twitch. With her hand her whole soul, her whole life, lay in his hand. He wanted to raise some doubt in her mind: he spoke in a down-hearted tone of his future prospects; he said that there was very little hope of his ever winning recognition from the world for his compositions.

“What is the good of recognition?” she asked. “They can take nothing from you, and what they give you is clear gain.”

He became silent. The feeling of her worth to him swept like a fiery meteor through the heaven of his existence.

The statement that they were going to remain in Nuremberg made her happy, particularly because of her father. She said there was a small apartment for rent on Ægydius Place, three rooms, a very quiet neighbourhood. They went over to the window; Gertrude showed him the house. It was close to the church, right where the Place makes a turn.

Jordan came in, and welcomed Daniel with a long handshake. His hair had become greyer, he walked with more of a stoop, and his clothes showed traces of neglect.

When he heard what Daniel and Gertrude were planning to do, he shook his head: “It is a bad year, children. Why are you in such a hurry? Both of you are still young.”

“If we were older, we would have less courage,” replied Daniel.

Jordan took a seat, and buried his face in his hands. In course of time he looked up, and said that three years ago he had only eight thousand marks in the bank; that hard times had forced him to draw on this sum to keep the house going; and that to-day there was hardly a third of it left. Two thousand marks was all he could give Gertrude as a dowry; with that they would have to be satisfied, and get along as well as they could.

“We don’t need any more,” said Daniel; “as a matter of fact I did not expect that much. Now I haven’t a care in the world; I am ready for anything.”

A bat flew in at the open window, and then quietly flew out again. It had stopped raining. You could still hear the water trickling and splashing down the leaders and in the pipes. There was something heavy, portentous, in the air of this June evening.

XIV

At first Daniel had received small bits of news from England about Benda, but for a year and a half he had not heard a word. When Eleanore returned from Pommersfelden in July, she told him that she had received a letter from Benda in April, and that she had sent him this letter when he was at Naumburg. Daniel, however, had never received it, and the investigations which he made proved fruitless.

Benda’s mother was not in the city; she was living with relatives in Worms, but had kept her apartment at Herr Carovius’s.

Frau von Auffenberg was at Bad Ems, and did not plan to return until September. Daniel looked up old friends, and rebound the ties of former days. He also succeeded in getting a number of students to tutor, an occupation that netted him a little spending money.

He had to attend to a great deal of business for which he was quite unfit. He had imagined that he could get married just as he might go to a shop and buy something: he would not make any noise, nor would it take much time. He had a hundred moods, a hundred objections, a hundred grimaces. The apartment on Ægydius Place was already rented. It embittered him to think that in order to live with a person you loved, you had to have tables, beds, chairs, cupboards, lamps, glasses, plates, garbage cans, water pails, window cushions, and a thousand and one other foolish objects.

There was a great deal of talk in the city about the marriage. The people said they did not know what Jordan could be thinking of. They were convinced that he was in desperate financial straits if he would marry his daughter to an impecunious musician.

Daniel found everything hard: every day was his Day of Judgment. A melody was gnawing at his heart, trying to take on a pure and finished form. Freedom sounded in his ears with voices from above; his quiet fiancée begged for comradeship. The task to which he had dedicated himself demanded loneliness; then his blood carried him along and away, and he became like wax, but wild.

He would rush to Jordan’s house, enter the living room, his hair all dishevelled, sit down where the two sisters were working on Gertrude’s trousseau, and never utter a syllable until Gertrude would come up to him and lay her hand on his forehead. He thrust her back, but she smiled gently. At times, though none too frequently, he would take her by the arms and pull her down to him. When he did this, Eleanore would smile with marked demureness, as if it were not right for her to see two people in love.

There was a second-hand baby grand piano in Jordan’s living room. Daniel played on it in the evening, and the sisters listened. Gertrude was like a woman wrapt in peaceful slumber, her every wish having been fulfilled, with kindly spirits watching over her. Eleanore, however, was wide awake; she was awake and meditating.

XV

The day of the wedding arrived. At half past nine in the morning, Daniel appeared in Jordan’s house. He wore an afternoon suit and a high hat! He was vexed, and villanous to behold, a picture of misery.

Benno, the man of the world, was forced to leave the room. No sooner was he outside than he laughed so heartily that he fell into a clothes basket. He did not approve of this marriage; he was ashamed to tell his friends about it.

Gertrude wore a plain street dress and a little virgin bonnet, then prescribed by fashion. She sat by the table, and gazed into space with wide-opened eyes.

Eleanore came into the room with a wreath of myrtle. “You must put this on, Gertrude,” she said, “just to please us; just to make us feel that you are a real bride. Otherwise you look too sober, too much as though you two were going to the recorder’s office on profane business.”

“Where did you get that wreath?” asked Jordan.

“I found it in an old chest; it is mother’s bridal wreath.”

“Really? Mother’s bridal wreath?” murmured Jordan, as he looked at the faded myrtle.

“Put it on, Gertrude,” Eleanore again requested, but Gertrude looked first at Daniel, and then laid it to one side.

Eleanore went up to the mirror, and put it on her own head.

“Don’t do that, child,” said Jordan with a melancholy smile. “Superstitious people say that you will remain an old maid forever, if you wear the wreath of another.”

“Then I will remain an old maid, and gladly so,” said Eleanore.

She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Daniel half unconscious of what she was doing. The blond of her eyelashes had turned almost grey, the red of her lips had been dotted with little spots from her smiling, and her neck was like something liquid and disembodied.

Daniel saw all this. He looked at the Undine-like figure of the girl. It seemed to him that he had not seen her since the day of his return, that he had not noticed that she had become more mature, more beautiful, and more lovely. All of a sudden he felt as if he were going to swoon. It went through him like a flash: Here, here was what he had forgotten; here was the countenance, the eye, the figure, the movement that had stood before him, and he, fool, unspeakable fool, had been struck by blindness.

Gertrude had a fearful suspicion of the experience he was going through. She arose, and looked at Daniel in horror. He hastened up to her as if he were fleeing, and seized her hands. Eleanore, believing she had aroused Daniel’s displeasure by some word or gesture, snatched the myrtle wreath from her hair.

Jordan had paid no attention to these incidents. Bringing at last his restless pacing back and forth to an end, he took out his watch, looked at it, and said it was time they were going. Eleanore, who had displayed a most curious disposition the whole morning, asked them to wait a minute. Before they could find out why she wished them to wait, the door bell rang, and she ran out.

She returned with a radiant expression on her face; Marian Nothafft followed her. Marian composed herself only with extreme difficulty. Her eyes roamed about over the circle of people before her, partly as if she were frightened, partly as if she were looking for some one.

Mother and son stood face to face in absolute silence. That was the work of Eleanore.

Marian said she was living with her sister Theresa; that she had arrived the day before; and that she wished to return this evening.

“I am glad, Mother, that you could come,” said Daniel with a stifled voice.

Marian laid her hand on his head; she then went up to Gertrude, and did the same.

After the wedding, Jordan gave a luncheon for his children. In the afternoon they all started off in two hired coaches. Daniel had never seen his mother so cheerful; but it was useless to ask her to prolong her visit. While this was being discussed, she and Eleanore exchanged knowing glances.

As evening drew on, Daniel and Gertrude betook themselves to their home.

XVI

It is night. The antiquated old square is deserted. The bell in the church tower has struck eleven; the lights in the windows die out, slowly, one by one.

The figure of a woman is seen coming up the alley. She is spying anxiously about, before her and behind her. Finally she stops before the little house in which Daniel and Gertrude live. Is it a living creature? Is it not rather an uncanny gnome? The garments hang loose about the unshapely body; a crumpled straw hat covers the mad-looking face; the shoulders are raised; the fists are clenched; the eyes are glassy.

Suddenly there is a scream. The woman hastens over toward the church, falls on her knees, and sinks her teeth with frenzied madness into the wooden pickets of the fence. After some time she rises, stares up once more at the windows with distorted lips, and then moves away with slow, dragging steps.

It was Philippina Schimmelweis. She kept going about the streets in this fashion until break of day.

DANIEL AND GERTRUDE

I

The Reichstag had voted to extend the period during which the Socialist law would be in effect; the passing of a new army bill was also to be expected. These two measures had provoked tumultuous discord in many parts of the country.

The Social Democrats were planning a parade through the main streets of the city in October, but the police had already forbidden their demonstration. The evening the edict was issued the regiments stood at alert in the barracks; feeling ran high throughout the entire city. In Wöhrd and Plobenhof there had been a number of riots; in the narrow streets of the central zone thousands of workmen had stormed the Rathaus.

Every now and then there would come a long, shrill whistle from the silent mass, followed at once by the heavy rolling of drums at the guard house.

Among those who came down from the direction of Koenig Street was the workman Wachsmuth. In the vicinity of the Schimmelweis shop he delivered an excited harangue against the former member of the party; his words fell on fruitful soil. A locksmith’s apprentice who had lost some money through the Prudentia violently defamed the character of the bookseller.

The mob gathered before the lighted shop window. Wachsmuth stood by the door, and demanded that the traitor be suspended from a lamp post before this day’s sun had set. A stone flew through the air over their heads, and crashed through the window; pieces of glass flew in all directions. Thereupon a dozen fellows rushed into the shop, exclaiming, “Where is the dirty dog? Let us get at the blood-sucker!” They wanted to teach him a lesson he would never forget.

Before Theresa could open her mouth, scraps of books and newspapers were flying in every direction, and pamphlets were being trampled under foot. A forest of arms were reaching out for the shelves, and bundles of books were falling to the floor, like stacks of cards piled up by a child and blown over by the wind. Zwanziger had taken refuge at the top of the ladder; he was howling. Theresa stood by the till looking like the ghost of ages. Philippina came in through the back door, and eyed what was going on without one visible trace of surprise or discomfort; she merely smiled. Just then the policeman’s whistle blew; in less time than it takes to draw one breath, the rebellious insurgents were beating a hasty retreat.

When Theresa regained consciousness, the shop was empty; and the street in front of the shop was as deserted as it ordinarily is at midnight. After some time, the chief of police came up; he was followed by a crowd of curious people, who stood around and gaped at the scene of devastation.

Jason Philip, seeing what was coming, had left the shop betimes and hidden in his house. He had even locked the front door and was sunk down on a chair, his teeth clappering with vigour and regularity.