Part 32

In his soul he had gone through the trials of renunciation long ago. His passionate wishes of former times had gone through a process of weakening from loss of blood. He had learned to bow to the inevitable; he had made a special effort to acquire this bit of earthly wisdom. When he surveyed the life he had lived in the past five years, it resembled, despite its flux and the incessant change from city to city and country to country, a sojourn in a room with closed doors and drawn shades.

When he had returned to the city, which he loved simply because Eleanore lived in it, he had had no intention of reminding Eleanore of the expiration of the time mutually agreed upon. He felt that it would be a banal display of poor taste to appear before her once again as an awkward, jilted suitor, and try to reconnect the thread where it had been so ruthlessly broken five years ago. He had intended not to disturb her or worry her in any way. But to go to her and speak with her, that had been the one bright ray of hope in all these empty years.

After the scene with Herr Carovius he decided quite firmly to keep away from Eleanore.

His ready cash had shrunk to a few hundred marks. He discharged his servants, disposed of some of his jewelry, and rented one of those little houses that are stuck on the rocks up by the castle like so many wasp nests. The house he took had been occupied before him by the Pfragners, and with its three rooms was not much larger than a fair-sized cage in a menagerie. But he had taken it into his head to live there, and that was all there was to it. He bought some old furniture, and adorned the slanting walls of the dilapidated barracks with such pictures as he had.

One evening there was a knock at the green door of the cottage. Eberhard opened, and saw Herr Carovius standing before him.

Herr Carovius entered the Baron’s doll house, looked around in astonishment, and, pale as a sheet, said: “So help me God, it seems to me you are trying to play the rôle of a hermit. This won’t do; this is no place for a Baron; I will not stand for it.”

Eberhard reached for the book he had been reading, a volume of Carl du Prel, and read on without replying to Herr Carovius or even taking notice of the fact that he was present.

Herr Carovius tripped from one foot to the other. “Perhaps the Baron will be so good as to take a look at his account,” he said in a beseeching tone. “I am in a tight place. My capital is gone, and my debts in the shape of interest have been swelling like the Pegnitz in the spring of the year. Would you like to know what I have been living on for the last three months? I have been living on turnips, potato peelings, and brick cheese; that has been my daily diet; and I have submitted to it for the sake of my Baron.”

“I am not a bit interested in what you have been eating,” said the Baron arrogantly, and kept on reading.

Herr Carovius continued with an imbecile sulk: “When you left me recently because of that little quarrel we had about the Goose Man, it never occurred to me that you were going to take the matter so seriously. Lovers like to be teased, I thought. He’ll come back, I thought, he’ll come back just as sure as laughter follows tickling. Well, I was mistaken. I thought you were of a more gentle disposition, and that you would be more indulgent with an old friend. Yes, we make mistakes sometimes.”

Eberhard remained silent.

Herr Carovius sighed, and sat down timidly on the narrow edge of the sofa that stood next to the whitewashed wall. He sat there for almost an hour in perfect silence. Eberhard appreciated neither the ridiculous nor the fantastic element in the conduct of his guest. He read on.

And then, all of a sudden, Herr Carovius sprang to his feet, took his wallet from his pocket, drew out a thousand-mark note, and laid it, together with a blank receipt, across the page Eberhard was reading. Before the Baron could recover from his amazement he had already disappeared, closing the door behind him. The sound of his footsteps on the street could be heard in the room; but he was gone.

What rare living creatures there are, O World, and what rare dead ones, too! This is the thought that passed through Eberhard’s mind.

IX

That two men as radically different by nature as Eberhard and Daniel chanced to meet and be drawn together at the very period of their lives when both had voluntarily renounced human society was due to one of those decrees of Providence that contain in them either a law of crystallisation or the attraction of polar forces, however much they may seem to be matters of pure chance.

Their coming together took place on the day after Daniel had gone to Eschenbach. At the break of day, Daniel had decided to return by way of Schwabach, both for the sake of variety and because this was the shorter route. The sun was hotter than on the day before; and when it had reached the height of its ability to dry up the land and scorch a human being, Daniel lay down in the forests. Late in the afternoon, just as he was approaching Schwabach, great black clouds began to gather in the West; a fearful storm was evidently to be expected. Heavy streaks of lightning flashed across the sky; and although Daniel tried to hasten his steps, the storm overtook him. Before he could reach the shelter of a house, he was wet to the skin from head to foot.

The rain came down in torrents. He waited a long while, and then had to start out in it again, arriving finally at the station shivering with cold. As he went to buy his ticket he noticed a lean, haggard, unusual looking individual standing at the ticket window. It is quite probable that, vexed by his uncomfortable condition, Daniel treated him none too courteously; he pushed up against him, whereupon the man turned around, and Daniel recognised the young Baron, Eberhard von Auffenberg. Eberhard in turn recognised Daniel. It is unlikely that there was at that time another face in the world which could belong so completely to just one person as that of Daniel.

The Baron had been attracted to Schwabach by his affection for a certain person there, an affection he had preserved from the days of his childhood. There lived in Schwabach at the time a woman who had been his nurse. Her undivided and resigned love for him was touching. She was as proud of him as she might have been had she been able to say that in him she had been responsible for the childhood training of the noblest specimen of manhood known to human history. And he was fond of her; the stories she told him he could still recall, and he did recall them frequently and with pleasure. She had married the foreman of a tin mill, and had sons and daughters of her own. Eberhard had been planning for years to visit her. This visit had now been paid. But Eberhard could not say that he had derived extraordinary pleasure from it: it had taken an inner figure from his soul. And, on the other hand, whether the nurse felt, on seeing the tall, lank, stiff, and ill-humoured foster son, that enraptured charm she so much liked to conjure up before her imagination, is a question that had better remain unanswered.

When Eberhard became aware of the condition in which Daniel then found himself, his feelings of chivalry were moved. With the dauntless courage of which he was capable, he subdued the apathy he had cherished toward Daniel ever since he first came to know him, and to which actual detestation and disquieting jealousy had been added a few weeks ago. “You have been out in the rain,” said Eberhard courteously, but with a reserve that was rigid if not quite forbidding or impenetrable.

“I look like it, don’t I?” said Daniel with a scowl.

“You will catch cold if you are not careful. May I offer you my top coat?” continued Eberhard more courteously. He felt as if he could see the figure of Eleanore rising up behind Daniel, that she was quite surrounded by flowers, and that she was smiling at him in joy and gratitude. He bit his lips and blushed.

Daniel shook his head: “I am accustomed to all kinds of weather. Thank you.”

“Well, then, at least wrap this around your neck; the water is running down your back.” Thereupon Eberhard reached him a white silk kerchief he drew from the pocket of his coat. Daniel make a wry face, but took the kerchief, threw it about his neck, and tied it in a knot under his chin.

“You are right,” he admitted, and drew his head down between his shoulders: “It all reminds me of a good warm bed.”

Eberhard stared at the locomotive of the in-coming train. “Plebeian,” he thought, with inner contempt.

Nevertheless he joined this same plebeian in the third-class carriage, though he had bought a ticket for first class. Was it the white silk kerchief that so suddenly attracted him to the plebeian? What else could it have been? For during the entire journey they sat opposite each other in absolute silence. It was a remarkable pair: the one in a shabby, wet suit with a hat that looked partly as though it belonged to a cheap sign painter, and partly as though it were the sole head gear of a gypsy bard, and with a big pair of spectacles from which the eyes flashed green and unsteady; the other looking as though he had just stepped out of a bandbox, not a particle of dust on his clothing, in patent leather slippers, English straw hat, and with an American cigarette in his mouth.

Next to them sat a peasant woman with a chicken basket on her lap, a red-headed girl who held the hind part of pig on her knees, and a workman whose face was bandaged.

At times they looked at each other. If they chanced to catch each other’s eye, the Baron would at once look down, and Daniel, bored as he was, would gaze out of the window at the rain. But there must have been something unusually communicative and mutually intelligent in the few glances with which they involuntarily honoured each other during the journey; for when the train pulled into the station, they left together, and walked along the street quite peacefully, side by side, just as if it were to be taken as a matter of fact that they would remain in each other’s company.

Man is a gregarious animal; given the right conditions, one man will seek out the company of another. Neither defiance nor reserve is of the slightest avail; there is something that conquers the strongest man when he finds another who will yield. Then it is that what was formerly regarded as contentment with loneliness is unmasked and shown to be nothing more than ordinary self-deception.

“I presume you wish to go home and change your clothes,” said Eberhard, standing on the street corner.

“I am already dry,” said Daniel, “and I really have no desire to go home. Over there on Schütt Island is a little inn called the Peter Vischer. I like it because it is frequented only by old people who talk about old times, and because it is situated on a bridge, so that you have the feeling you are in a ship floating around on the water.”

Eberhard went along. From eight o’clock till midnight they sat there opposite each other. Their conversation was limited to such remarks as, “It is really quite comfortable here.”—“It seems to have stopped raining.”—“Yes, it has stopped.”—“That old white-bearded man over by the stove who is doing so much talking is a watchmaker from Unschlitt Place.”—“So? He looks pretty husky.”—“He is said to have fought in the battle of Wörth.”—And so their remarks ran.

When they separated, Eberhard knew that Daniel would again be at the Peter Vischer on Wednesday of the following week, and Daniel knew that he would find the Baron there.

X

Philippina was on her knees by the hearth, cleaning out the ashes; Eleanore was sitting by the kitchen table, adding up the week’s expenses in a narrow note-book.

“You ought-a git married, Eleanore,” said Philippina, as she blew on a hot coal, “’deed you ought; it’s the right time for you.”

“Ah, leave me alone,” said Eleanore angrily.

Philippina crouched still lower on the hearth: “I mean well by you, I do,” she said. “You’re simply killing yourself here. With your white skin and sugary eyes—uhm, uhm! You bet if I had ’em like yours I’d git one. Men are all as dumb as shoats outside of a sty.”

“Keep quiet,” said Eleanore, and went on counting: “Seven from fifteen leaves eight....”

“An angel has made your bed,” interrupted Philippina with a giggle. “I know a fellow,” she went on, her face becoming rather sour, “he’s just the right one. Money? whew! He’s stuck on you too, believe me! If I wuz to go to him and say, Eleanore Jordan is willing, I believe the old codger would give me a bag of gold. Cross my heart, Eleanore, and he’s a fine man too. He can play the piano just as good as Daniel, if not better. When he plays you can see the sparks fly.”

Eleanore got up, and closed the book. “Do you want me to give you a present for finding me a man, Philippina?” she asked, with a sympathetic smile. “And you are trying to sound me? Go on, you fool.”

“Come wind and blow my fire hot, so that my soup be not forgot,” whispered Philippina with a gloomy face.

Eleanore left the kitchen and went upstairs. Her heart was full of longing; it was in truth almost bursting with longing.

XI

It was at the beginning of October that Daniel for the first time visited Eberhard in his doll house up by the castle.

They had met each other in the Peter Vischer on the evening agreed upon, but there was a special party there that evening, a sort of a clam-bake; the place was crowded; the noise was disagreeable, so that they left much earlier than they had intended.

They walked along in silence until they reached the Town Hall, when Eberhard said: “Won’t you come up and sit awhile with me?” Daniel nodded.

Eberhard lighted the six candles of a chandelier in his diminutive room. Seeing that Daniel was surprised, he said: “There is nothing I hate worse than gas or oil. That is light; gas and oil merely give off illuminated stench.”

For a while there was complete silence in the room; Daniel had stretched out on the sofa.

“Illuminated stench,” he repeated with a smile of satisfaction. “That is not bad; it is the new age in which we are living. I believe they call it _fin de siècle_. The day when things flourish is gone; everything has to be manufactured now. Men have become Americans, gruesomely sobered by the intoxication of doing a big business; women have lost their nicety of instinct; the cities have become colossal steam engines; everybody, young and old, is on his belly adoring the so-called wonders of science, just as if it really meant anything to humanity that a loafer in Paris can sip his morning coffee and crunch his rolls while reading that the Pope spent a restful night, or that a gun has been invented which will send a bullet through fourteen people one after another, whereas the best record up to the present had been only seven to a shot. Who can create anything, who can draw anything from his soul under such conditions? It is madness, it is immoral discipline.”

“Oh, I don’t know; I think a man can draw something from within his soul,” said the Baron, in whose face a bored, peeved expression gave way to one of suspense. “It is possible, for example, to conjure the invisible spirit into visibility.”

Daniel, who had not yet suspected that the Baron was, in a way, speaking from another country and in a strange tongue, continued: “The whole supply of interest and enthusiasm at the disposal of the nation has been used up. The venerable creations of days gone by still have nominal value; that is, they are still gaped at and praised, but creative, reproductive, and moulding power they no longer have. Otherwise hocus-pocus alone prospers, and he who does forgive it is not forgiven. But life is short; I feel it every day; and if you do not attend to the plant, it soon withers and dies.”

“It is not only hocus-pocus,” replied Eberhard, who was now completely transformed, though he did not grasp the painful indignation of the musician. “You see, I have associated but very little with men. My refuge has been the realm of departed and invisible spirits who take on visible form only when a believing soul makes an unaffected appeal to them. It was my task to de-sensualise and de-materialise myself; then the spirits took on shape and form.”

Daniel straightened up, and saw how pale the Baron had become. It seemed to him that they were both quite close together, and at the same time poles removed from each other. He could not refrain however from taking up the thread of his thought. “Yes, yes,” he exclaimed with the same short, jerky laugh that accompanied the beginning of the conversation, “my little spirits also demand faith, credulity, and whine and cry for form and shape. You have expressed yourself in an admirable way, Baron.”

“And have you given up in final resignation with regard to your spirits?” asked Eberhard, in a serious tone.

“Resignation? To what? Of what? Do you imagine that is necessary in my case? I am the counterpart of Cronos. My children devour me; they devour my living body. I conjure up spirits and endow them with flesh and blood, and in return for what I do they convert me into a shadow. They are rebellious fellows, I tell you, quite without mercy. I am supposed to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of one’s steel there is a distinct pleasure in entering the fray. But my little spirits want to be pampered and have a lot of attention paid them. The hate, consequently, that is being dammed up within me is possibly nothing but rage at my fruitless wooing. No, mine is not an honest hate, because I long to get at every ragged beggar who will have nothing to do with my spirits, because my entire life consists in pleading for an audience with people who do not care to listen, and scraping together pennies of love from people who cannot love, because two or three are not enough for me, because I must have thousands and am nothing if I don’t have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me laugh when he looks me in the face and says, I don’t give a damn for all your art. And yet there is humanity in such people, and so long as this is true I must have them; I must convince them, even if my heart is torn from my breast in the attempt. Would you call this life? This digging-up of corpses from the graves, and breathing the breath of life into them so that they may dance? And doing it with the consciousness that this moment is the only one? I am; I exist; here is the table, there are the wax candles, and over there sits a man; and when I have stopped talking everything is different, everything is as if a year had passed by, and everything is irrevocable. Show me a way to humanity, to men, and then I will believe in God.”

The Baron’s head swam; his brain felt close; it seemed to be sultry, stuffy in his skull. He could not help but think of certain exciting meetings where the people had sat in the dark in trembling expectancy and then suddenly heard a voice from beyond the tomb at the sound of which the marrow froze in their bones. He hardly dared look at the place where Daniel was sitting. The words of the musician caused him infinite pain: there lay in them a greediness, a shamelessness, and a gruesomeness that filled him with terror.

He could almost have asked: And Eleanore? And Eleanore?

But however much he felt repelled, owing to his training, association, 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.”