Chapter 16

Beside herself with grief, the Baroness made up her mind to tell him, for the first time in her life, of the thousand wrongs that burned within her heart. And she did: “Oh, you monster! Why did Fate bring you into my life? Where is there another woman in the world whose lot has been like mine? Where is the woman who has lived without joy or love or esteem or freedom or peace, a burden to others and to herself? Show me another woman who goes about in silk and satin longing for death. Name me another woman who people think is happy, because the devil, who tortures her without ceasing, deceives them all. Where is there another woman who has been so shamelessly robbed of her children? For is not my daughter the captive and concubine of an insane tuft-hunter? Has not my son been taken from me through the baseness that has been practised against his sister, and the lamentable spectacle afforded him by my own powerlessness? Where, I ask high Heaven, is there another woman so cursed as I have been?”

She threw herself down on her bosom, and burrowed her face into the cushion.

The Baron was surprised at the feverish eloquence of his wife; he had accustomed himself to her mute resignation, as he might have accustomed himself to the regular, monotonous ticking of a hall clock. He was anxious to see what she would do next, how she would develop her excitement; she was a novel phenomenon in his eyes: therefore he remained standing in the door.

But as he stood there in chilly expectancy, his haggard face casting off expressions of scorn and surprise, he suddenly sensed a feeling of weary disgust at himself. It was the disgust of a man whose wishes had always been fulfilled, whose lusts had been satisfied; of a man who has never known other men except as greedy and practical supplicants; of a man who has always been the lord of his friends, the tyrant of his servants, and the centre of all social gatherings; of a man before whom all others yielded, to whom all others bowed; of a man who had never renounced anything but the feeling of renunciation.

“I am not unaware,” he began slowly, just as if he were making a campaign speech to his electors, “I am not unaware that our marriage has not been the source of wholesome blessings. To be convinced of this, your declamation was unnecessary. We married because the circumstances were favourable. We had cause to regret the decision. Is it worth while to investigate the cause now? I am quite devoid of sentimental needs. This is true of me to such an extent that any display of sympathy or exuberance or lack of harshness in other people fills me with mortal antipathy. Unfortunately, my political career obliged me to assume a favourable attitude toward this general tendency of the masses. I played the hypocrite with complete consciousness of what I was doing, and made so much the greater effort to conceal all feeling in my private life.”

“It is easy to conceal something you do not have,” replied the Baroness in a tone of intense bitterness.

“Possibly; but it is a poor display of tact for the rich man to irritate the poor man by flaunting his lavish, spendthrift habits in his face; and this is precisely what you have done. The emphasis you laid on a certain possession of yours, the value of which we will not dispute, provoked my contempt. It gave you pleasure to cry when you saw a cat eating a sparrow. A banal newspaper novel could rob you completely of your spiritual equanimity. You were always thrilled, always in ecstasy, it made not the slightest difference whether the cause of your ecstasy was the first spring violet or a thunder storm, a burnt roast, a sore throat, or a poem. You were always raving, and I became tired of your raving. You did not seem to notice that my distrust toward the expression of these so-called feelings was transformed into coldness, impatience, and hatred. And then came the music. What was at first a diversion for you, of which one might approve or disapprove, became in time the indemnity for an active life and all the defects of your character. You gave yourself up to music somewhat as a prostitute gives herself up to her first loyal lover”—the Baroness twitched as if some one had struck her across the back with a horsewhip—“yes, like a prostitute,” he repeated, turning paler and paler, his eyes glistening. “Then it was that your whole character came to light; one saw how spoiled you were, how helpless, how undisciplined. You clung like a worm to uncertain and undetermined conditions. If I have become a devil in your eyes, it is your music that has made me so. Now you know it.”

“So that is it,” whispered the Baroness with faltering breath. “Did you leave me anything but my music? Have you not raged like a tiger? But it is not true,” she exclaimed, “you are not so vicious, otherwise I myself would be a lie in the presence of the Eternal Judge, and that I had borne children by you would be contrary to nature. Leave me, go away, so that I may believe that it is not true!”

The Baron did not move.

In indescribable excitement, and as quickly as her obese body would permit, the Baroness leaped to her feet: “I know you better,” she said with trembling lips, “I have been able to foreshadow what is driving you about; I have seen what makes you so restless. You are not the man you pretend to be; you are not the cold, heartless creature you seem. In your breast there is a spot where you are vulnerable, and there you have been struck. You are bleeding, man! If we all, I and your daughter and your brothers and your friends and your cowardly creatures, are as indifferent and despicable to you as so many flies, there is one who has been able to wound you; this fact is gnawing at your heart. And do you know why he was in a position to wound you? Because you loved him. Look me in the eye, and tell me that I lie. You loved him—your son—you idolised him. The fact that he has repudiated your love, that he found it of no value to him, the love that blossomed on the ruined lives of his mother and sister, this is the cause of your sorrow. It is written across your brow. And that you are suffering, and suffering for this reason, constitutes my revenge.”

The Baron did not say a word; his lower jaw wagged from left to right as though he were chewing something; his face seemed to have dried up; he looked as though he had suddenly become older by years. The Baroness, driven from her reserve, stood before him like an enraged sibyl. He turned in silence, and left the room.

“My suffering is her revenge,” he murmured on leaving the room. Once alone, he stood for a while perfectly absent-minded. “Am I really suffering?” he said to himself.

He turned off a gas jet that was burning above the book case. “Yes, I am suffering,” he confessed reluctantly; “I am suffering.” He walked along the wall with dragging feet, and entered a room in which a light was burning. He felt the same satiety and disgust at himself that he had experienced a few moments earlier. This time it was caused by the sight of the hand-carved furniture, the painted porcelain, the precious tapestries, and the oil paintings in their gold frames.

He longed for simpler things; he longed for barren walls, a cot of straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants, had long been tired of Protestantism. He regarded the Roman Church as the more wholesome and merciful.

But the transformation of his religious views was his own carefully guarded secret. And secret it had to remain until he, the undisciplined son of his mother, could atone for his past misdeeds. He decided to wait until this atonement had been effected. Just as a hypnotist gains control of his medium by inner composure, so he thought he could hasten the coming of this event by conceding it absolute supremacy over his mind.

III

When Eberhard von Auffenberg left the paternal home to strike out for himself, he was as helpless as a child that has lost the hand of its adult companion in a crowd.

He put the question to himself: What am I going to do? He had never worked. He had studied at various universities as so many other young men have studied, that is, he had managed to pass a few examinations by the skin of his teeth.

He had had so little to do in life, and was so utterly devoid of ambition, that he looked upon a really ambitious individual as being insane. Anything that was at all practical was filled with insurmountable obstacles. His freedom, in other words, placed him in a distressing state of mind and body.

It would not have been difficult for him to find people who would have been willing to advance him money on his name. But he did not wish to incur debts of which his father might hear. If he did, his solemn solution of an unbearable relation would have amounted to nothing.

He could, of course, count on his share of the estate; and he did count on it, notwithstanding the fact that to do so was to speculate on the death of his own father. He stood in urgent need of a confidential friend; and this friend he thought he had found in Herr Carovius.

“Ah, two people such as you and I will not insist upon unnecessary formalities,” said Herr Carovius. “All that I need is your face, and your signature to a piece of paper. We will deduct ten per cent at the very outset, so that my expenses may be covered, for money is dear at present. I will give you real estate bonds; they are selling to-day at eighty-five, unfortunately. The Exchange is a trifle spotty, but a little loss like that won’t mean anything to you.”

For the ten thousand marks that he owed, Eberhard received seven thousand, six hundred and fifty, cash. In less than a year he was again in need of money, and asked Herr Carovius for twenty thousand. Herr Carovius said he did not have that much ready money, and that he would have to approach a lender.

Eberhard replied sulkily that he could do about that as he saw fit, but he must not mention his name to a third party. A few days later Herr Carovius told a tale, of hair-splitting negotiations: there was a middleman who demanded immodest guarantees, including certified notes. He swore that he knew nothing about that kind of business, and that he had undertaken to supply the needed loan only because of his excessive affection for his young friend.

Eberhard was unmoved. The eel-like mobility of the man with the squeaking voice did not please him; not at all; as a matter of fact he began to dread him; and this dread increased in intensity and fearfulness in proportion to the degree in which he felt he was becoming more and more entangled in his net.

The twenty thousand marks were procured at an interest of thirty-five per cent. At first Eberhard refused to sign the note. He would not touch it until Herr Carovius had assured him that it was not to be converted into currency, that it could be redeemed with new loans at any time, and that it would lie in his strong-box as peacefully as the bones of the Auffenberg ancestors rested in their vaults. Eberhard, tired of this flood of words, yielded.

Every time he signed his name he had a feeling that the danger into which he was walking was becoming greater. But he was too lazy to defend himself; he was too aristocratic to interest himself in petty explanations; and he was simply not capable of living on a small income.

The endorsed notes were presented as a matter of warning; new loans settled them; new loans made new notes necessary; these were extended; the extensions were costly; an uncanny individual shielded in anonymity was taken into confidence. He bought up mortgages, paid for them in diamonds instead of money, and sold depreciated stocks. The debts having reached a certain height, Herr Carovius demanded that Eberhard have his life insured. Eberhard had to do it; the premium was very high. In the course of three years Eberhard had lost all perspective; he could no longer survey his obligations. The money he received he spent in the usual fashion, never bothered himself about the terms on which he had secured it, and had no idea where all this was leading to and where it was going to end. He turned in disgust from Herr Carovius’s clumsy approaches, malicious gibes, and occasional threats.

What an insipid smile he had! How fatuous, and then again how profound, his conversation could be! He took upon himself the impudent liberty of running in and out at Eberhard’s whenever he felt like it. He bored him with his discussion of philosophic systems, or with miserable gossip about his neighbours. He watched him day and night.

He followed him on the street. He would come up to him and cry out, “Herr Baron, Herr Baron!” and wave his hat. His solicitude for Eberhard’s health resembled that of a gaoler. One evening Eberhard went to bed with a fever. Herr Carovius ran to the physician, and then spent the whole night by the bedside of the patient, despite his entreaties to be left alone. “Would it not be well for me to write to your mother?” he asked, with much show of affection on the next morning when he noticed that the fever had not fallen. Eberhard sprang from his bed with an exclamation of rage, and Herr Carovius left immediately and unceremoniously.

Herr Carovius loved to complain. He ran around the table, exclaiming that he was ruined. He brought out his cheque book, added up the figures, and cried: “Two more years of this business, dear Baron, and I will be ready for the poor house.” He demanded security and still more securities; he asked for renewed promises. He submitted an account of the total sum, and demanded an endorsement. But it was impossible for any one to make head or tail out of this welter of interest, commissions, indemnities, and usury. Herr Carovius himself no longer knew precisely how matters stood; for a consortium of subsequent indorsers had been formed behind his back, and they were exploiting his zeal on behalf of the young Baron for all it was worth.

“What is this I hear about you and the women?” asked Herr Carovius one day. “What about a little adventure?” He had noticed that the Baron had a secret; and it enraged him to think that he could not get at the bottom of this amorous mystery.

He made this discovery one day as Eberhard was packing his trunk. “Where are you going, my dear friend?” he crowed in exclamatory dismay. Eberhard replied that he was going to Switzerland. “To Switzerland? What are you going to do there? I am not going to let you go,” said Herr Carovius. Eberhard gave him one cold stare. Herr Carovius tried beseeching, begging, pleading. It was in vain; Eberhard left for Switzerland. He wanted to be alone; he became tired of being alone, and returned; he went off again; he came back again, and had the conversation with Eleanore that robbed him of his last hope. Then he went to Munich, and took up with the spiritists.

Spiritual and mental ennui left him without a vestige of the power of resistance. An inborn tendency to scepticism did not prevent him from yielding to an influence which originally was farther removed from the inclinations of his soul than the vulgar bustle of everyday life. Benumbed as his critical judgment now was, he went prospecting for the fountain of life in a zone where dreams flourish and superficial enchantment predominates.

Herr Carovius hired a spy who never allowed Eberhard to get out of his sight. He reported regularly to his employer on the movements of the unique scion of the Auffenberg line. If Eberhard needed money, he was forced to go to Carovius, who would stand on the platform for an hour waiting for the Baron’s train to come in; and once Eberhard had got out of his carriage, Herr Carovius excited the laughter of the railroad officials by his affectionate care for his protégé. Delighted to see him again, he would talk the sheerest nonsense, and trip around about his young friend in groundless glee.

It seemed after all this that Herr Carovius really loved the Baron; and he did.

He loved him as a gambler loves his cards, or as the fire loves the coals. He idealised him; he dreamt about him; he liked to breathe the air that Eberhard breathed; he saw a chosen being in him; he imputed all manner of heroic deeds to him, and was immeasurably pleased at his aristocratic offishness.

He loved him with hatred, with the joy of annihilation. This hate-love became in time the centre of his thoughts and feelings. In it was expressed everything that separated him from other men and at the same time drew him to them. It controlled him unconditionally, until a second, equally fearful and ridiculous passion became affiliated with it.

IV

Daniel had hesitated for a long while about making use of the letter of introduction from Frau von Erfft. Gertrude then took to begging him to go to the Baroness. “If I go merely to please you, my action will avenge itself on you,” he said.

“If I understood why you hesitate, I would not ask you,” she replied in a tone of evident discomfort.

“I found so much there in Erfft,” said he, “so much human kindness that was new to me; I dislike the idea of seeing some ulterior motive back of it, or of putting one there myself. Do you understand now?” She nodded.

“But must is stronger than may,” he concluded, and went.

The Baroness became quite interested in his case. The position of second Kapellmeister at the City Theatre was vacant, and she tried to have Daniel appointed to it. She was promised that it would be given to him; but the usual intrigues were spun behind her back; and when she urged that the matter be settled immediately and in favour of her candidate, she was fed on dissembling consolation. She was quite surprised to be brought face to face with hostile opposition, which seemed to spring from every side as if by agreement against the young musician. Not a single one of his enemies, however, allowed themselves to be seen, and no one heard from by correspondence. It was the first time that she had come in conflict with the world in a business way; there was something touching in her indignation at the display of cowardly fraud.

Finally, after a long, and for her humiliating, interview with that chief of cosmopolitan brokers, Alexander Dörmaul, Daniel’s engagement for the coming spring was agreed upon.

In the meantime the Baroness took lessons from Daniel. She expressed a desire to familiarise herself with the standard piano compositions, and to be given a really practical introduction to their meaning and the right method of interpreting them.

It was long before she became accustomed to his cold and morose sternness. She had the feeling that he was pulling her out of a nice warm bath into a cold, cutting draught. She longed to return to her twilights, her ecstatic moods, her melancholy reveries.

Once he explained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut the piano with a bang, and said: “Adieu, Baroness.” He did not return until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.

“Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time,” he thought, though he did not fail to appreciate the Baroness’s human dignity. The eight hours a month were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.

A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.

Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of Schumann’s “Carneval” for her, a piece of music of which she was passionately fond.

Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be alone. He bent the rim of his hat down so that it covered his forehead. His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.

At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: “Tell me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?”

This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so old. This is the light in which we must see him.

V

The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.

With very limited means, but with diligence and pleasure, Gertrude had done all in her power to make the apartment as comfortable as possible. Though the ceilings were low and the walls almost always damp, the rooms seemed after all quite home-like and attractive.

In Daniel’s study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the face of the father turned toward the mask of Zingarella as if to ask who and what it was. The mask hung on the other side of the room from the oil painting; its unbroken smile was lost in the shadows.

Gertrude had to do all the household work; they could not afford a servant. In the years of Daniel’s absence, however, she had learned to copy notes. Herr Seelenfromm, assistant to the apothecary Pflaum, had taught her. He was a cousin of Frau Rübsam, and she had become acquainted with him through Eleanore. In his leisure hours he composed waltzes and marches, and dedicated them to the princes and princesses of the royal family. He also dedicated one to Gertrude. It was entitled “Feenzauber,” and was a gavotte.

When Daniel learned of her accomplishment, he was so astonished that he threw his hands above his head. The rare being looked up at him intoxicated with joy. “I will help you,” she said, and copied his notes for him.

When they walked along the streets she would close her eyes at times. A melody floated by her which she had never before been able to understand. As she bought her vegetables and tried to drive a bargain with the old market woman, her soul was full of song.