Chapter 40

Daniel went to send Philippina to the Golden Posthorn. But Philippina had gone out with Agnes. He saw one of the maids from one of the other apartments standing on the steps, and got her to run the errand. It was a long while before she returned, and when the wine was finally poured out, Döderlein had not time to drink: he was scheduled to give a lecture in the conservatory at seven. He drank about half of his glass, and then took hasty leave of Daniel, shaking his hand with unwonted fervour.

Daniel sat for a while thinking it all over. There was a knock at the door, and old Jordan came in. “May I?” he asked.

Daniel nodded. Jordan took a seat on the chair Döderlein had been sitting on. He looked into Daniel’s face quizzically. “Is it true, Daniel, that you are going to get married again? That you are going to marry the Döderlein girl?”

“Yes, Father, it is true,” replied Daniel. He got a fresh glass, filled it, and pushed it over to the old man. “Drink, Father!” he said.

The old man sipped the wine with an air of adoration. “It must be nine or ten years since I have had any wine,” he said more or less to himself.

“You have not had a happy life,” replied Daniel.

“I will not complain, Daniel. I bear it because I have to. And who knows? Perhaps there is still a measure of joy in store for me. Perhaps; who knows?”

The two men sat in silence and drank. It was so still that you could hear the fluttering of the light in the lamp.

“Where can Philippina be?” asked Daniel.

“Yes, Philippina. I had forgot to tell you,” began old Jordan sorrowfully. “She came to me this afternoon, and told me she was going over to Frau Hadebusch’s with Agnes and was going to stay there until after the wedding. But she spoke in such a confused way that I couldn’t make out just what she planned to do. It sounded in fact as though she were thinking of leaving the house for good and all. I wonder whether the girl isn’t a little off in her head? Day before yesterday I heard an awful racket in the kitchen; and when I went down, I saw at least six plates lying on the floor all smashed to pieces. And as if this was not enough, she threatened to throw the dishwater on me. She was swearing like a trooper. Now tell me: how is this? Can she go over to Frau Hadebusch’s, and take Agnes with her without getting any one’s consent?”

Daniel made no reply. The thought of Philippina filled him with anguish; he feared some misfortune. He felt that he would have to let her have her way.

XIX

In the night Daniel became very much excited. He left the house, and, despite the darkness and the snow storm, wandered out to the country quite unmindful of the cold and snow and the wind.

He listened to the whisperings of his soul; he took council with himself. He looked up at the great black vaulted arch of heaven as though he were beseeching the powers above to send him the light he felt he needed. The morning of the approaching day seemed bleaker, blacker to him than the night that was passing. He was lost in anxiety: he went over to his graves.

He did not stop to think until well on his way that the gate to the cemetery would be closed; but he kept on going. He looked around for a place in the wall where he might climb over. Finally he found one, climbed up, scratched his hands painfully, leaped down into some snow-covered hedges, and then wandered around with his burden of grief over the stormy, desolate field of the dead. As he stood before Gertrude’s grave he was overwhelmed with the feeling of the hour: there were voices in the storm; he felt that the horror and the memory of it all would hurl him to the ground. But when he stood by the grave of Eleanore, he felt his peace return. The clouds suddenly opened on the distant horizon, and a moonbeam danced about him.

It was almost morning when he reached home.

A week later he went over to Siegmundshof and got Dorothea.

Sylvia and Dorothea came down through a snow-covered alley to meet him. They were walking arm in arm, and Sylvia was laughing at Dorothea’s easy-flowing conversation. They seemed to be getting along perfectly together: there could be no mistaking the picture he saw before him. Sylvia told Daniel when she was alone with him that she had taken a great liking to Dorothea. She remarked that her cheerfulness was irresistible and contagious, and that when she was with children she became a child herself.

Yet, despite all this, Sylvia studied Daniel. And when Dorothea was present she studied her too: she cast fleeting, searching, unassured glances at them—at Daniel and at Dorothea.

Daniel and Dorothea were married on a sunny day in December.

DOROTHEA

I

For the past fortnight, Philippina and Agnes had been living at Frau Hadebusch’s. A message came from Daniel telling Philippina that she and Agnes should return, or, if she preferred to stay with Frau Hadebusch, she should send Agnes home at once.

“There you have it,” said Frau Hadebusch, “the master speaks.”

“Ah, him—he’s been speakin’ to me for a long while. Much good it does him,” said Philippina. “The child stays with me, and I’m not going back. That settles it! What, Agnes? Yes?”

Agnes was sitting on the bench by the stove with Henry the idiot, reading the greasy pages of a cheap novel. When Philippina spoke to her, she looked up in a distracted way and smiled. The twelve-year-old child had a perfectly expressionless face; and as she never got out of the house for any length of time, her skin was almost yellow.

“It ain’t no use to try to buck him,” continued Frau Hadebusch, who looked as old as the mountains and resembled generally a crippled witch, “he c’n demand the kid, and if he does he’ll git her. If you ain’t careful, I’ll get mixed up in the mess before long.”

“Well, how do you feel about it, Agnes? Do you want to go back to your daddy?” said Philippina, turning to the girl, and looking at Frau Hadebusch in a knowing way.

Agnes’s face clouded up. She hated her father. This was the point to which Philippina had brought matters by her incessant whisperings and ugly remarks behind Daniel’s back. Agnes was convinced that she was a burden to her father, and his marriage had merely confirmed what she already felt she knew. Deep in her silent soul she carried the picture of her prematurely deceased mother, as if it were that of a woman who had been murdered, sacrificed. Philippina had told her how her mother had committed suicide; it was a fearful tale in her language. It had been the topic of conversation between her and her charge on many a cold, dark winter evening. Agnes always said that when she was big and could talk, she would take vengeance on her father.

When she could talk! That was her most ardent wish. For she was silent-born. Her soul pined in a prison that was much harsher and harder than that in which her mother’s soul had been housed and harassed. Gertrude had some bright moments; Agnes never. She was incapable of enthusiasm; she could not look up. For her heart, her soul was not merely asleep, torpid, lethargic; it was hopelessly dried up, withered. Life was not in it.

“I am not going to those Döderleins,” she said, crying.

But in the evening Daniel came over. He took Philippina to one side, and had a serious talk with her. He explained the reasons for his getting married a third time as well as he could without going too deeply into the subject. “I needed a wife; I needed a woman to keep house for me; I needed a companion. Philippina, I am very grateful to you for what you have done, but there must also be a woman in my home who can cheer me up, turn my thoughts to higher things. I have a heavy calling; that you cannot appreciate. So don’t get stubborn, Philippina. Pack up your things, and come back home. How can we get along without you?”

For the first time in his life he spoke to her as though she were a woman and a human being. Philippina stared at him. Then she burst out into a loud, boisterous laugh, and began to show her whole supply of scorn. “Jesus, Daniel, how you c’n flatter a person! Who’d a thought it! You’ve always been such a sour dough. Very well. Say: ‘Dear Philippina!’ Say it real slow: ‘D-e-a-r Philippina,’ and then I’ll come.”

Daniel looked into the face of the girl, who never did seem young and who had aged fearfully in the last few months. “Nonsense!” he cried, and turned away.

Philippina stamped the floor with her foot. Henry, the idiot, came out into the hall, holding a lamp above his head.

“Does the sanctimonious clerk still live here?” asked Daniel, looking up at the crooked old stairway, while a flood of memories came rushing over him.

“Thank God, no!” snarled Philippina. “He’d be the last straw. I feel sick at the stomach when I see a man.”

Daniel again looked into her detestable, ugly, distorted, and wicked face. He was accustomed to question everything, eyes and bodies, about their existence in terms of tones, or their transformation into tones. Here he suddenly felt the toneless; he had the feeling one might have on looking at a deep-sea fish: it is lifeless, toneless. He thought of his Eva; he longed for his Eva. Just then Agnes came out of the door to look for Philippina.

He laid his hand on Agnes’s hair, and said good-naturedly, looking at Philippina: “Well, then—d-e-a-r Philippina, come back home!”

Agnes jerked herself away from him; he looked at the child amazed; he was angry, too. Philippina folded her hands, bowed her head, and murmured with much humility: “Very well, Daniel, we’ll be back to-morrow.”

II

Philippina arrived at the front door at ten o’clock in the morning. In one hand she carried her bundle; by the other she led Agnes, then studying her _milieu_ with uneasy eyes.

Dorothea opened the door. She was neatly and tastefully dressed: she wore a blue gingham dress and a white apron with a lace border. Around her neck was a gold chain, and suspended from the chain a medallion.

“Oh, the children!” she cried cheerfully, “Philippina and Agnes. What do you think of that! God bless you, children. You are home at last.” She wanted to hug Agnes, but the child pulled away from her as timidly as she had pulled away from her father yesterday. In either case, she pulled away!

Philippina screwed her mouth into a knot on hearing a woman ten years her junior call her a child; she looked at Dorothea from head to foot.

Dorothea scarcely noticed her. “Just imagine, Philippin’, the cook didn’t come to-day, so I thought I would try my own hand,” said Dorothea with glib gravity, “but I don’t know, the soup meat is still as hard as a rock. Won’t you come and see what’s the matter?” She took Philippina into the kitchen.

“Ah, you’ve got to have a lid on the pot, and what’s more, that ain’t a regular fire,” remarked Philippina superciliously.

Dorothea had already turned to something else. She had found a glass of preserved fruit, had opened it, taken a long-handled spoon, dived into it, put the spoon to her mouth, and was licking away for dear life. “Tastes good,” she said, “tastes like lemon. Try it, Philippin’.” She held the spoon to Philippina’s lips so that she could try it. Philippina thrust the spoon rudely to one side.

“No, no, you have got to try it. I insist. Taste it!” continued Dorothea, and poked the spoon tightly against Philippina’s lips. “I insist, I insist,” she repeated, half beseechingly, half in the tone of a command, so that Philippina, who somehow or other could not find her veteran power of resistance, and in order to have peace, let the spoon be shoved into her mouth.

Just then old Jordan came out into the hall, and with him the chimney-sweeper who wished to clean the chimney.

“Herr Inspector, Herr Inspector,” cried Dorothea, laughing; and when the old man followed her call, she gave him a spoonful, too. The chimney-sweep likewise; he had to have his. And last but not least came Agnes.

They all laughed; a faint smile even ventured across Agnes’s pale face, while Daniel, frightened from his room by the hubbub, came out and stood in the kitchen door and laughed with the rest.

“Do you see, Daniel, do you see? They all eat out of my hand,” said Dorothea contentedly. “They all eat out of my hand. That’s the way I like to have things. To your health, folks!”

III

One afternoon Dorothea, with an open letter in her hand, came rushing into Daniel’s room, where he was working.

“Listen, Daniel, Frau Feistelmann invites me over to a party at her house to-morrow. May I go?”

“You are disturbing me, my dear. Can’t you see you are upsetting me?” asked Daniel reproachfully.

“Oh, I see,” breathed Dorothea, and looked helplessly at the stack of scores that lay on the top of the table. “I am to take my violin along and play a piece or two for the people.”

Daniel gazed into space without being able to comprehend her remarks. He was composing.

Dorothea lost her patience. She stepped up to the place on the wall where the mask of Zingarella had been hanging since his return home. “Daniel, I have been wanting for some time to ask you what that thing is. Why do you keep it there? What’s it for? It annoys me with its everlasting grin.”

Daniel woke up. “That is what you call a grin?” he asked, shaking his head; “Is it possible? That smile from the world beyond appeals to you as a grin?”

“Yes,” replied Dorothea defiantly, “the thing is grinning. And I don’t like it; I can’t stand that silly face; I don’t like it simply because you do like it so much. In fact, you seem to like it better than you do me.”

“No childishness, Dorothea!” said Daniel quietly. “You must get your mind on higher things; and you must respect my spirits.”

Dorothea became silent. She did not understand him. She looked at him with a touch of distrust. She thought the mask was a picture of one of his old sweethearts. She made a mouth.

“You said something about playing at the party, Dorothea,” continued Daniel. “Do you realise that I never heard you play? I will frankly confess to you that heretofore I have been afraid to hear you. I could tolerate only the excellent; or the promise of excellence. You may show both; and yet, what is the cause of my fear? You have not practised in a long while; not once since we have been living together. And yet you wish to play in public? That is strange, Dorothea. Be so good as to get your violin and play a piece for me, won’t you?”

Dorothea went into the next room, got her violin case, came out, took the violin, and began to rub the bow with rosin. As she was tuning the A string, she lifted her eyebrows and said: “Do you really want me to play?”

She bit her lips and played an _étude_ by Fiorillo. Having finished it but not having drawn a word of comment from Daniel, she again took up the violin and played a rather lamentable selection by Wieniawski.

Daniel maintained his silence for a long while. “Pretty good, Dorothea,” he said at last. “You have, other things being equal, a very pleasant pastime there.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dorothea with noticeable rapidity, a heavy blush colouring her cheeks.

“Is it anything more than that, Dorothea?”

“What do you mean?” she repeated, embarrassed and indignant. “I should think that my violin is more than a pastime.”

Daniel got up, walked over to her, took the bow gently from her hands, seized it by both ends, and broke it in two.

Dorothea screamed, and looked at him in hopeless consternation.

With great earnestness Daniel replied: “If the music I hear is not of unique superiority, it sounds in my ears like something that has been hashed over a thousand times. My wife must consider herself quite above a reasonably melodious dilettantism.”

Tears rushed to Dorothea’s eyes. Again she was unable to grasp the meaning of it all. She even imagined that Daniel was making a conscious effort to be cruel to her.

For her violin playing had been a means of pleasing—pleasing herself, the world. It had been a means of rising in the world, of compelling admiration in others and blinding others. This was the only consideration that made her submit to the stern discipline her father imposed upon her. She possessed ambition, but she sold herself to praise without regard for the praiser. And whatever an agreement of unknown origin demanded in the way of feeling, she fancied she could satisfy it by keeping her mind on her own wishes, pleasures, and delights while playing.

Daniel put his arms around her and kissed her. She broke away from him in petulance, and went over to the window. “You might have told me that I do not play well enough for you,” she exclaimed angrily and sobbed; “there was no need for you to break my bow. I never play. It never occurred to me to bother you by playing.” She wept like a spoiled child.

It cost Daniel a good deal of persuasion to pacify her. Finally he saw that there was no use to talk to her; he sighed and said nothing more. After a while he took her pocket handkerchief, and dried the tears from her eyes, laughing as he did so. “What was really in my mind was that party at Frau Feistelmann’s. I did not want you to go. For I do not put much faith in that kind of entertainment. They do not enrich you, though they do incite all kinds of desires. But because I have treated you harshly, you may go. Possibly it will make you forget your troubles, you little fool.”

“Oh, I thank you for your offer; but I don’t want to go,” replied Dorothea snappishly, and left the room.

IV

Yet Dorothea said the next day at the dinner table that she was going to accept the invitation. It would be much easier just to go and have it over with, she remarked, than to stay away and explain her absence. She said this in a way that would lead you to believe that it had cost her much effort to come to her decision.

“Certainly, go!” said Daniel. “I have already advised you to do it myself.”

She had had a dark blue velvet dress made, and she wanted to wear it for the first time on this occasion.

Toward five o’clock Daniel went to his bedroom. He saw Dorothea standing before the mirror in her new dress. It was a tall, narrow mirror on a console. Dorothea had received it from her father as a wedding present.

“What is the matter with her?” thought Daniel, on noticing her complete lack of excitement. She was as if lost in the reflection of herself in the mirror. There was something rigid, drawn, transported about her eyes. She did not see that Daniel was standing in the room. When she raised her arm and turned her head, it was to enjoy these gestures in the mirror.

“Dorothea!” said Daniel gently.

She started, looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled a heady smile.

Daniel was anxious, apprehensive.

V

“I am related to Daniel, and we must address each other by the familiar _Du_,” said Philippina to Dorothea. Daniel’s wife agreed.

Every morning when Dorothea came into the kitchen Philippina would say: “Well, what did you dream?”

“I dreamt I was at the station and it was wartime, and some gipsies came along and carried me off,” said Dorothea on one occasion.

“Station means an unexpected visit; war means discord with various personalities; and gipsies mean that you are going to have to do with some flippant people.” All this Philippina rattled off in the High German of her secret code.

Philippina was also an adept in geomancy. Dorothea would often sit by her side, and ask her whether this fellow or that fellow were in love with her, whether this girl loved that fellow and the other girl another, and so on through the whole table of local infatuations. Philippina would make a number of dots on a sheet of paper, fill in the numbers, hold the list up to the light, and divulge the answer of the oracle.

In a very short while the two were one heart, one soul. Dorothea could always count on Philippina’s laughter of approval when she fell into one of her moods of excessive friskiness. And if Agnes failed to show the proper amount of interest, Philippina would poke her in the ribs and exclaim: “You little rascallion, has the cat got your tongue?”

Agnes would then sneak off in mournful silence to her school books, and sit for hours over the simplest kind of a problem in the whole arithmetic. Dorothea would occasionally bring her a piece of taffy. She would wrap it up, put it in her pocket, and give it the next day to a schoolmate from whose note book she had copied her sums in subtraction.

Herr Seelenfromm stopped Philippina on the street, and said to her: “Well, how are you getting along? How is the young wife making out?”

“Oi, oi, we’re living on the fat of the land, I say,” Philippina replied, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. “Chicken every day, cake too, wine always on hand, and one guest merely opens the door on another.”

“Nothafft must have made a pile of money,” remarked Herr Seelenfromm in amazement.

“Yes, he must. Nobody works at our house. The wife’s pocket-book at least is always crammed.”

The sky was blue, the sun was bright, spring had come.

VI

Andreas Döderlein always took Sunday dinner with his children. He loved a juicy leg of pork, a salad garnished with greens and eggs, and a tart drowned in sugar. Old Jordan, who was privileged to sit at the table, let the individual morsels dissolve on his tongue. He had never had such delicacies placed before him in his life. At times he would cast a glance of utter astonishment at Daniel.

He very rarely took part in the conversation. As soon as the dishes had been removed, he would get up and quietly go to his room.

“A very remarkable old man,” said Andreas Döderlein one Sunday, as he sat tipped back on his chair, picking his teeth.

“Ah, we have our troubles with him,” said Dorothea abusively, “he is an incorrigible pot-watcher. He comes to the kitchen ten times a day, sticks his nose up in the air, asks what we are going to have for dinner, and then goes out and stands in the hall, with the result that our guests come and stumble over him.”

Andreas Döderlein emitted a growl of lament.

“How are your finances, my son?” he asked, turning to Daniel with an air of marked affability. “Would you not like to bolster up your income by taking a position in the conservatory? You would have time for it; your work as organist at St. Ægydius does not take up all your time. Herold is going to be retired, you know. He is seventy-five and no longer able to meet the requirements. All that we will have to do will be for me to give you my backing. Three thousand marks a year, allocation to your widow after ten years of service, extra fees—I should think you would regard that as a most enticing offer. Or don’t you?”

Dorothea ran up to her father in a spirit of unrestrained jubilation, threw her arms around his bulky body, and kissed him on his flabby cheek.

“No thanks to me, my child,” said the Olympian; “to stand by you two is of course my duty.”

“What sort of a swollen stranger is that, anyhow?” thought Daniel to himself. “What does he want of me? Why does he come into my house and sit down at my table? Why is he so familiar with me? Why does he blow his breath on me?” Daniel was silent.

“I understand, my dear son, that you would abandon your leisure hours only with the greatest reluctance,” continued Döderlein with concealed sarcasm, “but after all, who can live precisely as he would like to live? Who can follow his own inclinations entirely? The everyday feature of human existence is powerful. Icarus must fall to the earth. With your wife anticipating a happy event, you cannot, of course, hesitate in the face of such an offer.”

Daniel cast an angry look at Dorothea.

“I will think it over,” said Daniel, got up, and left the room.

“It is unpleasant for him,” complained Dorothea; “he values his leisure above everything else in the world. But I will do all in my power to bring him around, Father. And you keep at him. He will resist and object. I know him.”