Chapter 37

Philippina was annoyed at the grudging squints cast at her by the old stay-at-home; her visits became rarer and rarer. She did not feel like opening her heart to Frau Hadebusch, for she did not appeal to her as a disinterested party. This completed her list of friends; she was obliged to restrain her impatience and excitement.

It was Christmas. On Christmas Eve they had bought a tree for Agnes, trimmed it, and lighted it with candles. Agnes’s Christmas gifts were placed under the tree: a big piece of ginger-bread, a basket with apples and nuts, and a cheap doll. For Old Jordan she had bought a pair of boots which he badly needed. He had been going around on his uppers since autumn.

Jordan was sitting by the door holding his boots on his knees. Agnes looked at the doll with unhappy eyes; she did not dare touch it. After gazing for a while into the light of the fluttering candles, Jordan said: “I thank you, Philippina, I thank you. You are a real benefactress. I also thank you for remembering the child. It is a paltry makeshift you have bought there at the bazaar, but any one who gives gifts to children deserves the reward of Heaven, and in such giving we do not weigh the value or count the cost.”

“Don’t whine all the time so!” shrieked Philippina. She was chewing her finger nails, hardly able to conceal her embarrassment. Frau Hadebusch had told her that Benjamin Dorn was coming around that evening to make a formal proposal of marriage.

“Just wait, Agnes, just wait!” continued old Jordan, “you’ll soon get to see a wonder of a doll. A few short years, and the world will be astonished. You are going to be the first to see it when it is finished. You’ll be the first, little Agnes, just wait. What have we got to eat on this holy evening?” asked Jordan, turning with fear and trembling to Philippina.

“Cold hash and broiled meal-beetles,” said Philippina scornfully.

“And ... and ... no letter from Daniel?” he asked in a sad voice, “nothing, nothing at all?”

Philippina shrugged her shoulders. The old man got up and tottered to his room.

A little later Philippina heard some one stumbling around in the hall, and then the bell rang. “Open the door,” she said to Agnes, who did as she was told and returned with Benjamin Dorn. The Methodist wore a black suit, and in his hand he had a black felt hat that was as flat as a pancake. He bowed to Philippina, and asked if he was disturbing any one. Philippina pushed a chair over to him. He sat down quite circumstantially, and laughed a hollow laugh. As Philippina was as silent as the tomb and looked at him so tensely, he began to speak.

First he expatiated on the general advantages of a married life, and then remarked that what he personally wished first of all was to be able to take a good, true woman into his own life as his wife. He said that he had gone through a long struggle over the matter, but God had finally shown him the light and pointed the way. He no longer hesitated, after this illumination from above, to offer Fräulein Schimmelweis his heart and his hand forever and a day, insist though he must that she give the matter due consideration, in the proper Christian spirit, before taking the all-important step.

Philippina was restless; she rocked back and forth, first on one foot and then on another—and then burst out laughing. She bent over and laughed violently. “No, you poor simpleton, what you want is my money, hey? Be honest! Out with it! You want my money, don’t you?”

Her anger grew as Benjamin Dorn sat and looked on, his asinine embarrassment increasing with each second of silence. “Listen! You’d like to git your fingers on it, wouldn’t you? Money—it would taste good, wouldn’t it? You think I’m crazy? Scrape a few coppers together and lose my mind and marry some poor fool, and let him loaf around and live on me. Nothing doin’! They ain’t no man livin’ what can catch Philippina Schimmelweis so easy as all that. She knows a thing or two about men, she does. D’ye hear me! Get out!” She sawed the air with her arms like a mad woman, and showed him the door.

Benjamin Dorn rose to his feet, stuttered something unintelligible, moved backwards toward the door, reached it, and left the place with such pronounced speed that Philippina once again broke out in a shrill, piercing laughter. “Come here, Agnes,” she said, sat down on the step in the corner, and took the child on her lap.

She was silent for a long while; the child was afraid to speak. Both looked at the lights on the Christmas tree. “Let us sing something,” said Philippina. She began with a hoarse, bass voice, “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,” and Agnes joined in with her high, spiritless notes.

Another pause followed after they had finished singing.

“Where is my father?” asked Agnes suddenly, without looking at Philippina. It sounded as if she had waited for years for an opportunity to ask this question.

Philippina’s face turned ashen pale; she gritted her teeth. “Your father, he’s loafing around somewhere in the country,” replied Philippina, and blew out one of the candles that had burned down and was ready to set the twig on fire. “He’s done with women, it seems, but you can’t tell. He strums the music box and smears good white paper full of crow-feet and pot-hooks. A person can rot, and little does he worry.” Whereat she set the child on the floor, hastened over to the window, opened it, and put her head out as if she were on the point of choking with the heat.

She leaned out over the snow-covered window sill.

“I’m getting cold,” said Agnes; but Philippina never heard her.

VIII

Daniel wrote to Eberhard and Sylvia asking them if he might visit them. He thought: “There are friends; perhaps I need friends again.”

He received a note in a strange, secretarial hand informing him that the Baroness was indeed very sorry but she could not receive him at Siegmundshof: she was in child-bed. She sent her best greetings, and told him that the newest born was getting along splendidly, as well as his brother who was now three years old.

“Everywhere I turn, children are growing up,” thought Daniel, and packed his trunk and started south as slowly as he could go, so slowly indeed that it seemed as if he were approaching a goal he was afraid to reach and yet had to.

He arrived in Nuremberg one evening in April. As he entered the room, Philippina struck her hands together with a loud bang, and stood as if rooted to the floor.

Agnes looked at her father shyly. She had grown slim and tall far beyond her age.

Old Jordan came down. “You don’t look well, Daniel,” he said, and seemed never to let go of his hand. “Let us hope that you are going to stay home now.”

“I don’t know,” replied Daniel, staring absent-mindedly around the walls. “I don’t know.”

On the third day he was seized with a quite unusual sense of fear and anxiety. He felt that he had made a mistake; that he had lost his way; that something was driving him to another place. He went into the kitchen. Philippina was cooking potato noodles in lard; they smelt good.

“I am going to Eschenbach,” he said, to his own astonishment, for the decision to do so had come with the assertion.

Philippina jerked the pan from the stove; the flames leaped up. “You can go to Hell, so far as I’m concerned,” she said in a furious rage. With the light from the fire flaring up through the open top of the stove and reflected in her face, she looked like a veritable witch.

Daniel gazed at her questioningly. “What is the matter with Agnes?” he asked after a while. “The child seems to try to avoid me.”

“You’ll find out what’s the matter with her,” said Philippina spitefully, and placed the pan on the stove again. “She don’t swallow people whole.”

Daniel left the kitchen.

“He is going over to see his bastard, the damned scoundrel,” murmured Philippina. She crouched down on the kitchen stool, and gazed into space.

The potato noodles burned up.

IX

Daniel entered his mother’s little house in Eschenbach late at night. As soon as he saw her, he knew that some misfortune had taken place.

Eva was gone. She had disappeared one evening four weeks ago. A troupe of rope dancers had given an exhibition in the city, and it was generally suspected that they had abducted the child. The people of Eschenbach were still convinced of their suspicion after the police had rounded up the dancers without finding a trace of the child.

A general alarm had been sent out, and investigations were being made even at the time of Daniel’s arrival. But they were in vain; it was impossible to find the slightest clue. To the authorities, indeed to every one, the case was a hopeless riddle.

They made a thorough search of the forests; the canals were drained; vagabonds were cross-questioned. It was all in vain; Eva had apparently been spirited away in some mysterious fashion. Then the Mayor received an anonymous letter that read as follows: “The child you are looking for is in safe keeping. She was not forced to do what she has done; of her own free will and out of love for her art she went off with the people with whom she is at present. She sends her grandmother the tenderest of greetings, and hopes to see her some time again, after she has attained to what she now has in mind.”

To this Eva had added in a handwriting which Marian Nothafft could be reasonably certain was her own: “This is true. Good-bye, grandmother!”

The people who mourned with Marian the loss of the child were convinced that if Eva had really written these words herself, she had been forced to do it by the kidnappers.

The letter bore the postmark of a city in the Rhenish Palatinate. A telegram brought the reply that a company of jugglers had been there a short while ago, but that they had already gone. It was impossible to say in what direction, but it was most likely that they had gone to France.

Marian was completely broken up. She no longer had any interest in life. She did not even manifest joy or pleasure at seeing Daniel.

Daniel in turn felt that the brightest star had fallen from his heaven. As soon as he had really grasped the full meaning of the tragedy, he went quietly into the attic room, threw himself across the bed of his lost daughter, and wept. “Man, man, are you weeping at last?” a voice seemed to call out to him.

Of evenings he would sit with his mother, and they would both brood over the loss. Once Marian began to speak; she talked of Eva. She had always been made uneasy by the child’s love for mimicry and shows of any kind. Long ago, she said, when Eva was only eight years old, a company of comedians had come to the village, and Eva had taken a passionate interest in them. She would run around the tent in which they played, from early in the morning until late in the evening. She had made the acquaintance of some of them at the time, and one of them took her along to a performance. Whenever the circus came to town, it was impossible to keep her in the house. “At times I thought to myself, there must be gipsy blood in her veins,” said Marian sadly, “but she was such a good and obedient child.”

Another time she told the following story. One Sunday in spring she took a walk with Eva. It had grown late, night had come on, and on the return journey they had to go through the forest. Marian became tired, and sat down on the stump of a tree to rest. The moon was shining, and there was a clearing in the forest where they had stopped. All of a sudden Eva sprang up and began to dance. “It was marvellous the way she danced,” said Marian, at the close of her story. “The girl’s slender, delicate little figure seemed to glide around on the moss in the moonlight of its own accord. It was marvellous, but my heart grew heavy, and I thought to myself at the time, she is not going to be with me much longer.”

Daniel was silent. “Oh, enchanting and enchanted creature!” he thought, “heredity and destiny!”

He remained with his mother for three weeks. Then he began to feel cramped and uneasy. The house and the town both seemed so small to him. He left and went to Vienna, where the custodian of the Imperial Institute had some invaluable manuscripts for him.

Six weeks later he received a letter that had followed him all over south Europe informing him of the death of his mother. The school teacher at Eschenbach had written the letter, saying, among other things, that the aged woman had died during the night, suddenly and peacefully.

A second letter followed, requesting him to state what disposition should be made of his mother’s property. He was asked whether the house was to be put on the market. A neighbour, the green-grocer, had expressed his willingness to look after Daniel’s interests.

Daniel wrote in reply that they should do whatever seemed best. There was a heavy mortgage on the house, and the amount that could reasonably be asked for it was not large.

He retired to a desolate and waste place.

X

While living in little towns and villages on the Danube, Daniel completed the third movement of the Promethean symphony. When he awoke as if from a delirious fever, it was autumn.

One morning in October he heard a saint playing the organ. It was in the Church of St. Florian near Enns. The great artist had lived in former years in the monastery, and now had the habit of coming back once in a while to hold communion with his God. In his rapture, Daniel felt as if his own crowned brother were at the organ. He sat in a corner and listened, meekly and with overwhelming delight. Then when a man passed by him, a stooped, haggard, odd-looking old fellow with a wrinkled face and dressed in shabby clothes, he was terror-stricken at the reality, the corporeality of genius: he wondered whether he himself were not a ghost.

The Swallow wrote: “There is only one who can redeem us: the musician. The day of founders of religion, builders of states, military heroes, and discoverers is gone. The poets have only words, and our ears have grown tired of words, words, words. They have only pictures and figures, and our eyes are tired beholding. The soul’s last consolation is to be found in music; of this I am certain. If there is any one thing that can make restitution for the lost illusions of religious faith, provide us with wings, transform us, and save us from the abyss to which we are rushing with savage senses, it is music. Where are you, O redeemer? You are wandering about over the earth, the poorest, the most abandoned, the guiltiest of men. When are you going to pay your debts, Daniel Nothafft?”

Daniel spent seven months in Ravenna, Ferrara, Florence, and Pisa. He was looking for some manuscripts by Frescobaldi, Borghesi, and Ercole Pasquini. Having found the most important ones he could regard his collection as complete.

Men seemed to him like puppets, landscapes like paintings on glass. He longed for forests; his dreams became disordered.

From Genoa he wandered on foot through Lombardy and across the Alps. He slept on hard beds in order to keep his hot blood in check, and lived on bread and cheese. His attacks of weakness, sometimes of complete exhaustion, did not worry him at first; he paid no attention to them. But in Augsburg he swooned, falling headlong on the street. He was taken to a hospital, where he lay for three months with typhus. From his window he could see the tall chimneys of factories and an endless procession of wandering clouds. It had become winter; the ground was covered with snow.

Two years after his last visit he again entered the house on Ægydius Place. When Philippina saw him, so pale and emaciated, she uttered a cry of horror.

Agnes had grown still taller, thinner, and more serious. At times when she looked at her father he felt like crying out to her in anger: “What do you mean by your everlasting questions?” But he never said a word of this kind to her.

When Philippina saw that Daniel had returned as lonesome and uncommunicative as he was when he went away, she took it upon herself to display a great deal of gentleness, kindness, sympathy in his presence. Old Jordan was living the same life he had been living for years. Everything in fact was just the same; it seemed that the household was run according to a prescribed routine. It seemed as if Daniel had been away, not six years, but six days.

He did not feel strong yet, but he worked day and night. The fourth movement of the symphony gave promise of being a miracle of polyphony. Daniel felt primeval existence, the original of all longing, the basic grief of the world urging and pulsing in him, and this he was translating into the symphony. The eternal wanderer had arrived at the gates of Heaven and was not admitted. Supernal harmonies had borne him aloft. Muffled drum beats symbolised his beseeching raps on closed doors. Within resounded the terrible “no” of the trumpets. The pleading of the violins was in vain; in vain the intercession of the one angel standing at the right, leaning on a harp without strings; in vain the melodious chants of the other angel at the left, crowned with flowers and all together lovely; in vain the elfin chorus of the upper voices, in vain the foaming lament of the voices below. No path here for him, and no space!

One evening Daniel noticed a strange girl at his window. She was beautiful. Struck by her charms, he got up to go to her. She had vanished. It was an hallucination. He became afraid of himself, left the house, and wandered through the streets as in days of long ago.

XI

It was Carnival Week, and the people had resumed their wonted gaiety. Masked boys and girls paraded the streets, making merry wherever they went.

As Daniel was passing through The Füll he was startled: the windows in the Benda house were lighted. He suddenly recalled that Herr Seelenfromm had told him that Frau Benda had returned from Worms some time ago, and was living with her niece; she had become totally blind.

He went up the steps and rang the bell. A grey-haired, distressed-looking woman came to the door. He thought she must be the niece. He told her his name; she said she had heard of him.

“You probably know that Friedrich has disappeared,” she said in a sleepy, sing-song voice. “It is eight years since we have heard from him. The last letter was from the interior of Africa. We have given up all hope. Not even the newspapers say anything more about him.”

“I have read nothing about it,” murmured Daniel. “But Friedrich cannot be dead,” he continued, shaking his head, “I will never believe it, never.” Partly in distraction and partly in anxiety, he riveted his eyes on the woman, who stared at his glasses as if held by a charm.

“We have done everything that was humanly possible,” she said. “We have written to the consulates, we have inquired of the military outposts and missionary stations, and all to no purpose.” After a pause she said with a little more vivacity: “You do not wish me to ask you in, I hope. It is so painful to my aunt to hear a strange voice, and I cannot think of letting you talk to her. If I did, it would merely open her old wounds, and she has a hard enough time of it as it is.”

Daniel nodded and went on his way. A coarse laugh could be heard down in the entrance hall; it was painfully out of harmony with the depressed atmosphere of the Benda apartment. He felt his heart grow faint; he felt a burning desire for something, though he was unable to say precisely what, something sweet and radiant.

On the last landing he stopped, and looked with utter amazement into the hall below.

Herr Carovius was dancing like a Merry-Andrew around the door of his residence. He had a crown of silver paper on his head, and was trying to ward off the importunate advances of a young girl. His smiles were tender but senile. The girl wore a carnival costume. Her dark blue velvet dress, covered with threads of silver, made her robust figure look slenderer than it actually was. A black veil-like cloth hung from her shoulders to the ground, and then draped along behind her for about three paces. It was sprinkled with glittering tinsel. In her hand she held a hideous wax mask of the face of an old sot with a red nose. She was trying to fit the mask to Herr Carovius’s face.

She was working hard to make him yield; she said she was not going to leave until she had put the mask on his face. Herr Carovius shook the door, which in the meantime had closed, fumbled about in his pockets for the key, but the girl gave him no peace.

“Come now, Teddy,” she kept crying, “come, Uncle, don’t be such an old bore.” She kept getting closer and closer to him.

“You wait, I’ll show you how to make a fool of respectable people,” croaked Herr Carovius in well-meaning anger. He resembled an old dog, hopping about and getting ready to make the plunge when his master throws his walking stick into the water. In his zeal, however, to prevent the girl from offending his dignity, he had forgotten the paper crown on his head. It wabbled and shook so when he hopped around, that the girl nearly split her sides laughing.

A maid came in just then with an apronful of snow. The girl with the sweeping train ran up to her, got some of the snow, and threatened to pelt Herr Carovius with it. He begged for mercy; and rather than undergo a bombardment with this cold stuff, he ceased offering resistance, whereupon the girl walked up to him and placed the mask on his face. Then, exhausted from laughter, she laid her head on his shoulder. The maid—it was Döderlein’s maid—was delighted at the comedy, and made a noise that resembled the cackling of a hen.

The scene was dimly lighted by a lamp attached to the adjacent wall, and had on this account, quite apart from the sight of Herr Carovius with the paper crown and the toper’s mask, something fantastic about it.

Daniel did not know that the girl was Dorothea Döderlein, though he half suspected as much. But whoever she was, he was impressed by her jollity, her actual lust for laughter, her complete lack of restraint. He had never known that sort of mirthful hilarity; and if he had known it, he could not recall it. Her youthful features, her bright eyes, her white teeth, her agile gestures filled him with deferential respect; his eyes swam with emotion. He felt so old, so foreign; he felt that where he was the sun was not shining, the flowers were not budding. He felt that life had appeared to him all of a sudden and quite unexpectedly in a new, kindly, bewitching light.

He came slowly down the steps.

“Is it possible!” cried Herr Carovius, tearing the mask from his face. “Can I trust my own eyes? It is our _maestro_! Or is it his ghost?”

“It is both he and his ghost,” replied Daniel drily.

“This is no place for ghosts,” cried Dorothea, and threw a snow ball, hitting him square on the shoulder.

Daniel looked at her; she blushed, and looked at Herr Carovius questioningly. “Don’t you know our Daniel Nothafft, you little ignoramus?” said Herr Carovius. “You know nothing of our coryphæus? Hail to the Master! Welcome home! He is here, covered with fame!”

At any other time Herr Carovius’s biliary sarcasm would have aroused Daniel’s whole stock-in-trade of aversion and indignation. To-day he was unimpressed by it. “How young she is,” he thought, as he feasted his eyes on the embarrassed, laughing Dorothea, “how gloriously young!”

Dorothea was angry because she did not have on the red dress she had had made in Munich.

“Dorothea!” called a strong voice from the first floor.

“Oh, there’s father!” whispered Dorothea. She was frightened. She ran up the steps on her tiptoes, dragging her long veil after her. The maid followed her.

“A devil, a regular little devil, _Maestro_,” said Herr Carovius turning to Daniel. “You must come in some time and hear how she can draw the bow. She’s a regular little devil, I say.”

Daniel bade Herr Carovius adieu, and went walking down the street with bowed head.

XII