IN MEMORY OF A DREAM FIGURE I

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One evening Daniel called on Benda to take leave of him for a long while.

Just as he was about to enter the front gate, he saw Herr Carovius’s dog standing there showing his teeth. The beast’s bloodshot eyes were fixed on a ten-year old girl who was likewise on the point of entering the house, but, afraid of the dog, she did not dare take another step. The animal had dragged his chain along behind him, and stood there now, snarling in a most vicious way.

Daniel took the child by the hand and led it back a few steps, after he had frightened the dog into silence by some rough commands. “Who are you?” he asked the girl.

“Dorothea DÖderlein,” was the reply.

“Ah,” said Daniel. He could not help but laugh, for there was a comic tone of precociousness in the girl’s manner of speaking. But she was a very pretty child. A sly, smiling little face peeped out from under her hood, and her velvet mantle with great pearl buttons enshrouded a dainty figure.

“You should have been in bed long ago, Dorothea,” said Daniel. “What will the night watchman think when he comes along and finds you up? He will take you by the collar, and lead you off to jail.”

Dorothea told him why she was still up and why she was alone. She had been visiting a school friend, and the maid who called for her wanted to get a loaf of bread from the bakery before going up stairs. She related the story of her meeting with the dog with so much coquetry and detail that Daniel was delighted at the contrast between this rodomontade and the quaking anxiety in which he first found her.

“You are a fraud, Dorothea,” said Daniel, and called to mind the unpleasant sensation she aroused in him when he saw her for the first time years ago.

In the meanwhile the maid had come up with the loaf of bread; she looked with astonishment at the two as they stood there gossiping, and immediately took the child into her charge, conscious as she was of her own dilatoriness. With a few piercing shrieks she drove CÆsar back from the gate, and as he ran across the street Dorothea cast one triumphant glance back at Daniel, feeling that she had proved to him that she was not the least afraid of the dog.

II

Frau Benda opened the door, closed it without saying a word, and went into her room. She had had a violent quarrel with her son, who had just informed her that he had accepted the invitation of a learned society to come to England and settle down. He was to start at the end of spring. Frau Benda was tired of travelling; she shuddered at the thought of moving. The separation from Friedrich seemed intolerable to her; and in his flight from the Fatherland she saw a final and premature renunciation of all the opportunities that might in the end present themselves to him at home.

She was convinced that the men who had done him injustice would in time come to see the error of their ways and make amends for their miscalculations. She was particularly anxious that he be patient until satisfaction had been done him. Moreover, she knew his plans, and trembled at the risks to which he was voluntarily exposing himself: she felt that he was undertaking a task for which he had not had the practical experience.

But his decision was irrevocable. That he had never said a word about it to Daniel, had not even insinuated that he was thinking of making a change, was due to the peculiar onesideness of their present relation to each other.

Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. “She looks to me as though she will give old DÖderlein a good deal to think about in the days to come,” said Daniel.

“You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old DÖderlein,” replied Benda. “The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and down for hours right under my bedroom.”

“You feel sorry for him, do you?”

“If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon.”

“Do you really mean it?” exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel continued: “To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I’ll get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime gulped down the whole earth.”

Benda smiled a gracious smile. “Yes, you die at each fall, and at each come-back you appear a new-made man,” he said. “That is fine. But a DÖderlein cannot come back, once his contemporaries have thrown him over. The very thing that means a new idea to you spells his ruin; what gives you pleasure, voluptuous pleasure, is death to him.”

“Y-e-s,” mumbled Daniel, “and yet, what good is he?”

“The spirit of nature, the spirit of God, is a total stranger to such conceptions as harmfulness and usefulness,” replied Benda in a tone of serious reflection. “He lives, and that is about all you can say. So far as I am concerned, I have not the slightest reason to defend a DÖderlein in your presence.” He was silent for a moment and took a deep breath. “I cannot speak more distinctly; somehow or other I cannot quite find the right words,” he continued in a disconcerted way, “but the point is, the man has committed a crime against a woman, a crime so malicious, subtle, and naÏve, that he deserves every stigma with which it is possible to brand him, and even then he would not be adequately punished.”

“You see,” exclaimed Daniel, “he is not only a miserable musician. And that is the way it always is. They are all like that. Oh, these bitter-sweet, grinning, pajama-bred, match-making, ninnying, super-smart manikins—it makes your blood curdle to look at one of them. And yet a real man has got to run the gauntlet before them his whole life long, and down through their narrow little alleys at that!”

“Rather,” said Benda with bowed head. “It is a tough, clammy poison pap. If you stir it with your finger, you will stick fast, and it will suck the very marrow out of your bones. But you are speaking for the time being without precise knowledge of all the pertinent material, as we say in science. During my study of the cells of plants and animals, I came to see that a so-called fundamental procreation was out of the question. I gave expression to this view in a circle of professional colleagues. They laughed at me. To-day it is no longer possible to oppose the theory I then advanced. One of my former friends succeeded in making certain combinations of acetic acid, crystallised by artificial means. When he made his great discovery known, one of the assembled gentlemen cried out: ‘Be careful, doctorette, or your amido atoms will get out of their cage.’ That is a sample of the base and treacherous fashion in which we are treated by the very people who we might think were our warmest friends, for they are apparently trying to reach the same goal that we are. But you! The world may reject you, and you still have what no one can take from you. I have to wait in patience until a judge hands down a decision either condemning me or redeeming me. You? Between you and me there is the same difference that exists between the seed which, sunk into the earth, shoots up whether it rains or shines, and some kind of a utensil which rusts in the store because no one buys it.”

He got up and said: “You are the more fortunate of us two, it behooves me therefore to be the more merciful.”

Daniel could make no reply that would console him.

As he went home, he thought of the fidelity and the constant but unassuming help he had received from Benda. He thought of the refined and delicate consideration of his friend. He thought especially of that extraordinary courtesy which was so marked in him, that, for example, while laughing at a good joke, Benda would stop with open mouth if some one resumed the conversation: he did not wish to lose anything another might wish to say to him.

He stopped. It seemed to him that he had neglected the opportunity to put an especially reassuring, cordial, and unforgettable force into his final handshake. He would have liked to turn back. But it is not the custom to turn back; no one in truth can do it.

III

Daniel did not wish to take the mask of Zingarella with him on his tours. To expose the fragile material to all the risks associated with a fortuitous life on the road seemed to him an act of impiety. He had consequently promised Eleanore to leave the mask with her in Jordan’s house during his absence.

Eleanore opened the door; Daniel entered. Gertrude arose from her seat at the table, and came up to meet him. Her face showed, as it always did when she saw him, unmistakable traces of resignation, willingness, submissiveness.

Daniel walked over to the table, took the newspaper wrapping from the mask, and held it up in the light of the lamp.

“How beautiful!” exclaimed Gertrude, whose senses were now delighted at the sight of any object that appealed to one’s feelings.

“Well, take it, then, Gertrude,” said Eleanore, as she leaned both elbows on the top of the table. “Keep it with you,” she continued somewhat tensely, when she noticed that Gertrude was looking at Daniel as if to say, “May I?”

“But won’t he give it to both of us?” replied Gertrude with a covetous smile.

“No, no, he simply mentioned me for courtesy’s sake,” said Eleanore, quite positively.

“Eleanore, I can scarcely tell you how I feel toward you,” said Daniel, half confused, half angry, and then stopped with conspicuous suddenness when the fiery blue of her eyes fell upon him.

“You?” she whispered in astonishment, “you?”

“Yes, you,” he replied emphatically. “Later I can tell everybody; to-day it is true in a double sense: you seem to me just like a sister.”

He had laid the mask to one side and extended his left hand to Eleanore, and then, hesitating at first, he gave Gertrude his right hand with a most decisive gesture.

Eleanore straightened up, took the mask of Zingarella, and held it up before her face. “Little Brother,” she cried out in a teasing tone. The pale, sweet stone face was wonderful to behold, as it was raised above the body that was pulsing with life.

And Gertrude—for one second she hung on Daniel’s gaze, a sigh as deep as the murmuring of the sea sounded in her bosom, and then she lay in his arms. He kissed her without saying a word. His face was gloomy, his brow wrinkled.

“Little Brother” sounded out from behind the mask. But there was no banter in the expression; it was much more like a complaint, a revelation of anguish: “Little Brother!”

IV

Daniel had left the city long ago. Eleanore chanced to meet Herr Carovius. He forced her to stop, conducted himself in such a familiar way, and talked in such a loud voice that the passersby simpered. He asked all about the young master, meaning Daniel.

He told her that “the good Eberhard”—it was his way of referring to Baron von Auffenberg—had gone to Munich for a few months, and was taking up with spiritists and theosophists.

“It is his way of having a fling,” said Herr Carovius, grinning from ear to ear. “In former times, when young noblemen wished to complete their education and have a little lark at the same time, they made the grand tour over Europe. Now-a-days they become penny-a-liners, or they go in for table-tipping. Humanity is on the decline, my charming little girl. To study the flower of the nation at close range is no longer an edifying occupation. It is rotten, as rotten, I tell you, as last winter’s apples. There is consequently no greater pleasure than to make such a young chap dance. You play, he dances; you whistle, he retrieves. It is a real treat!”

He laughed hysterically, and then had a coughing spell. He coughed so violently that the black cord suspended from his nose-glasses became tangled about a button on his great coat, and his glasses fell from his nose. In his awkwardness, intensified by his short-sightedness, he fumbled the button and the cord with his bony fingers until Eleanore came to the rescue. One move, and everything was again in order.

Herr Carovius was struck dumb with surprise. He would never have imagined that a young girl could be so natural and unembarrassed. He suspected a trap: was she making fun of him, or did she wish to do him harm? It had never occurred to him that one might voluntarily assist him when in distress.

Suddenly he became ashamed of himself; he lifted his eyes and smiled like a simpleton; he cast a glance of almost dog-like tenderness at Eleanore. And then, without saying a word, without even saying good-bye to her, he hastened across the street to hide as soon as he might in some obscure corner.

V

One afternoon in the last week of August, the RÜdiger sisters sent the boy who attended to their garden over to Eleanore with the urgent request that she call as soon as she possibly could. Feeling that some misfortune had befallen Daniel and that the sisters wished to tell her about it, Eleanore was not slow about making up her mind: exactly one quarter of an hour later she entered the RÜdigers’ front door.

A lamentable sight greeted her. Each of the three sisters was sitting in a high-backed chair, her arms hanging lifeless from her sides. The curtains were drawn; in the shaded light their faces looked like mummies. Nor was the general impression measurably brightened by the “Medea,” the “Iphigenie,” and the “Roman Woman” that hung on the wall, copies of the paintings of their idol.

Eleanore’s greeting was not returned. She did not dare leave without finding what was the matter, and the silence with which she was received was broken only when she herself decided to ask some questions.

FrÄulein Jasmina took out her handkerchief and dried her eyes. FrÄulein Saloma looked around somewhat like a judge at a session of court. And then she began to speak: “We three lonely women, forgotten by the world, have asked you to come to our house so that we might tell you of a crime that has been committed in our innocent home. We never heard of it until this morning. It is such an unexampled, gruesome, abominable deed that we have been sitting here ever since it was brought to our attention, wringing our hands in vain attempt to make up our minds as to what course we should pursue.”

FrÄulein Jasmina and FrÄulein Albertina nodded their heads in sadness and without looking up.

“Can we put the unfortunate girl out of the house?” continued FrÄulein Saloma, “can we, sisters? No! Can we afford to keep her? No! What are we to do then? She is an orphan; she is all alone, abandoned by her infamous seducer, and exposed to unmitigated shame. What are we to do?”

“And you,” said FrÄulein Saloma turning to Eleanore, “you who are bound to that gifted monster by ties the precise nature of which we are in no position to judge, you are to show us a way out of this labyrinth of our affliction.”

“If I only knew what you are talking about,” said Eleanore, a great burden falling from her heart as she realised that her initial fears were groundless. “By the monster you evidently mean Daniel Nothafft. What crime has he committed?”

FrÄulein Saloma was indignant at the flippancy of her manner. She rose to her full stature, and said with punitive lips: “He has made our maid an ordinary prostitute, and the consequences are no longer to be concealed. Do you know what we are talking about now?”

Eleanore uttered a faint “Oh!” and blushed to the roots of her hair. In her embarrassment she opened her mouth to laugh, but she came very near to crying.

Her saddened feelings slowly crept back to Daniel, and as the picture of him rose before her mind’s eye, she turned from it in disgust. But she did not wish to allow this picture to remain in her memory: it was too flabby, petty, and selfish. Before she knew what she was doing, she, as a woman, had pardoned him. Then she shuddered, opened wide her eyes, and resumed her accustomed cheerfulness. She was again in complete control of herself.

The court had in the meanwhile examined the silent woman with stern scrutiny: “Where is Daniel Nothafft at present?” asked FrÄulein Saloma.

“I do not know,” replied Eleanore, “he hasn’t written for over three weeks.”

“We must request you to inform him at once of the condition of the prostitute, for so long as such a person is in our house, we cannot sleep at night nor rest by day.”

“I am sorry that you take the matter so to heart,” said Eleanore, “and it is a rather disagreeable affair. But I have no right to mix myself up in it, nor have I the least desire to do so.”

The three sisters received this statement with despair; they wrung their hands. They would rather die, they said, than meet this voluptuary face to face again; they would endure all manner of martyrdom before they would have him come in. All three spoke at once; they threatened Eleanore; they implored her. Jasmina told with bated breath how Meta had come to them and confessed the whole business. Albertina swore that there was not another living soul on earth who could help them out of this shameless situation. Saloma said that there was nothing for them to do but to send the wicked creature back to the streets where she belonged.

Eleanore was silent. She had fixed her eyes on the “Medea,” and was doing some hard thinking. Finally she came to a conclusion: she asked whether she might speak to Meta. Filled at once with anxiety and hope, Saloma asked her what she wanted with Meta. She replied that she would tell them later what her purpose was. FrÄulein Jasmina showed her the way to Meta’s room.

When Meta caught sight of Eleanore, her features became at once beclouded in sombre amazement.

She was sitting at the open window of her attic room knitting. She got up and looked into the face of the beautiful girl without saying a word. Eleanore was moved on seeing the tall, youthful figure, and yet it was quite impossible for her to subdue a feeling of horror.

At Eleanore’s very first words, Meta began to sob. Eleanore comforted her; she asked her where she was planning to go during her confinement.

“Why, there are institutions,” she murmured, holding her apron before her face, “I can go to one of them.”

Eleanore sat down on the side of the bed. She unrolled her plans to the girl with a delicacy and consideration just as if she were speaking to a pampered lady. She spoke with a silver-clear vivacity just as if she were discussing some hardy prank. Meta looked at her at first with the air of one oppressed; later she assumed the attitude of a grateful listener.

Pained by the ethereal and inhuman primness of her three employers, angry at the man who had abandoned her to her present fate, and fighting against the reproaches of her own conscience, Meta became as wax in Eleanore’s hands, submissive, obedient, and appreciative.

The RÜdiger sisters, all but bursting with curiosity to know what Eleanore had in mind, could draw nothing from her other than that she was going to take Meta away and that Meta was agreed.

VI

It was Eleanore’s intention to take the pregnant girl to Daniel’s mother at Eschenbach.

She knew of the dissension between Daniel and his mother. She knew that the two avoided each other’s presence; that Daniel in his defiance felt it his duty to avenge himself for the lack of love on the part of his mother. Back of the picture of the unloving and impatient son she saw that of an old woman worrying her life away in silent care.

She had often given way to a painful feeling of sympathy when she thought of the unknown mother of her friend. It seemed to her now as if she could play the rÔle of an emissary of reconciliation; as if it were her duty to take the deserted woman here to the deserted woman there; as if she were called to take the mother-to-be to the mother who had just reasons for regretting that she had ever been a mother.

It seemed to her as if she must create a bond which could not even be sundered by crime, to say nothing of misunderstanding or caprice; it seemed to her that Daniel had to effect a reconciliation in the home of the RÜdigers as well as in that of his mother; and that, conscious as she was of doing what was right, she would meet with no opposition, would have no settling of accounts to fear.

She also took the practical side of the matter into careful consideration: Meta would have no trouble in making her living in Eschenbach; she could help Daniel’s mother, or she could do day work among the peasants.

When the child was born, Daniel’s mother would have a picture of young life to look at; it would alleviate her longing; it would appease her bitterness to see a child of Daniel’s own blood.

Eleanore told the people at home that she was going on an excursion with a school friend to the Ansbach country. She studied the time-table, and wrote a postcard to Meta telling her to be at the station at eight o’clock in the morning.

Jordan approved of Eleanore’s outing, though he warned her against bandits and cold drinks. Gertrude was not wholly without suspicion. She had a feeling that something was wrong, that these unspoken words referred to Daniel, for she was always thinking about him.

If she received a letter from him, which was very rare, she would let it lie on the table for a long while, imagining that it was full of the most glorious declarations of his love for her, expressed in language which she could not command. In a sort of moon-struck ecstasy she made an inner, dreamed music out of what he wrote.

When she read his letter, she was satisfied merely to see the words he had written and to feel the paper on which his hand had rested. She submitted in silence to the laws of his nature, which would not permit him to be excessive in his remarks or unusually communicative. Each of his dry reports was a tiding of glad joy to her, though her own replies were just as dry, giving not the slightest picture of the enraptured soul from which they came.

She felt that Eleanore was lying, and that the lie she was telling was somehow connected with Daniel. That is why she went up to Eleanore’s bed in the dead of night, and whispered into her ear: “Tell me, Eleanore, has anything happened to Daniel?”

But before Eleanore could reply, reassured by her sister’s astonished behaviour, and angry at herself for having suspected Eleanore of a falsehood, she hurried back to her own bed. She had come to think more and more of her sister every day.

“How she must love him,” thought Eleanore to herself, and buried her smiling face in the pillow.

VII

“Wait for me at the fountain,” said Eleanore to her companion, as she crossed the market place in Eschenbach at midday: “I’ll call for you as soon as everything has been discussed.”

The coachman pointed out the little house of the widow Nothafft.

A woman with a stern face and unusually large eyebrows asked her what she wanted as she entered the little shop, which smelled of vinegar and cheese.

Eleanore replied that she would like to talk with her for a few minutes quite undisturbed and alone.

The profound seriousness of Marian’s features, which resembled more than anything else an incurable suffering, did not disappear. She closed the shop and took Eleanore into the living room, and, without saying a word, pointed to one chair and took another herself.

Above the leather sofa hung the picture of Gottfried Nothafft. Eleanore looked at it for a long while.

“Dear mother,” she finally began, laying her hand on Marian’s knee. “I am bringing you something from Daniel.”

Marian twitched. “Good or bad?” she asked. She had not heard from Daniel for twenty-two months. “Who are you?” she asked, “what have you to do with him?”

Eleanore saw at once that she would have to be extremely cautious if she did not wish to offend the sensitive—and offended—woman by some inconsiderate remark. With all the discrimination she could command she laid her case before Daniel’s mother.

And behold—the unusual became usual, just as the natural seemed strange. Eleanore pictured Daniel’s hardships and rise to fame, boasted loyally of his talents and of the enthusiasm for him of those who believed in him, referred to his future renown, and insisted that all his guilt, including that toward his mother, be forgotten and forgiven.

Marian reviewed the past; she understood a great many things now that were not clear to her years ago; she understood Daniel better; she understood virtually everything, except this girl’s relation to him and the girl herself. If it was peculiar that this strange woman had to come to her to tell her who Daniel was and what he meant to the people, it was wholly inexplicable that she had brought some one with her who had been the sweetheart of the very man for whom she now showed unreserved affection.

Eleanore read Marian’s face and became a trifle more deliberate. It occurred to her, too, to ask herself a few questions: What am I, any way? What is the matter with me?

She could not give a satisfactory answer to these questions. His friend? He my friend? The words seemed to contain too much peace and calm. Brother? Companion? Either of these words brought up pictures of intimate association, inner relationship. Little Brother! Yes, that is what she had called out to him once from behind the mask. Well then: Little sister behind the mask?

Yes, that was what it should be: Little sister behind the mask. She had to have a hiding place for so many things of which she had only a vague presentiment and which in truth she did not care to visualise in brighter outlines. A subdued heart, a captured heart—it glows, it cools off, you lift it up, you weigh it down just as fate decrees. To be patient, not to betray anything, that was the all-important point: Little sister behind the mask—that was the idea.

Marian said: “My child, God himself has inspired you with the idea of coming to me and telling me about Daniel. I will put fresh flowers in the window as I did some time ago, and I will leave the front door open so that the swallows can fly in and build their nests. Perhaps he will think then from time to time of his mother.”

Then she asked to see Meta. Eleanore went out, and returned in a few minutes with her charge. Marian looked at the pregnant girl compassionately. Meta was ill at ease; to every question that was put to her she made an incoherent reply. She could stay with her, said Marian, but she would have to work, for there was no other way for the two to live. The girl referred to the fact that she had already worked out for four years, and that no one had ever accused her of lack of industry or willingness. Thereupon Marian told her she would have to be very quiet, that the people in the neighbourhood were very curious, and that if she ever gave them her family history she would have to leave.

This attended to, Eleanore went on her way. She refused quite emphatically to stay for dinner. Marian thought that she was in a hurry to catch the next coach, and accompanied her across the square. They promised to write to each other; before Eleanore got into the rickety old coach, Marian kissed her on the cheek.

She watched the coach until it had passed out through the city gate. A drunken man poked her in the ribs, the blacksmith called to her as she passed by, the doctor’s wife leaned out of the window and asked her who the cityfied lady was. Marian paid not the slightest attention to any of them; she went quietly and slowly back to her house.

VIII

Thus it came about that five weeks later a daughter of Daniel Nothafft saw the light of the world under Marian’s roof.

As soon as the child was born, Marian took a great liking to it, despite the fact that she had thought of it before its birth only with aversion. It was a fine little creature: its little legs and arms were delicately formed, its head was small, there was something peculiarly human about its first cries and laughter, and it showed quite distinctly that there was something noble in its character.

The people of Eschenbach were astonished. “Where did the child come from?” they asked. “Who is its mother? Who is its father?” The records in the office of the registrar of births showed that Meta SteinhÄger was the mother of the illegitimate child, Eva SteinhÄger, and that its father was unknown.

It was to be presumed, however, that widow Nothafft knew the details. The old women, and the young ones too, came on this account more frequently now than ever to her shop. They wanted to know how the little thing was getting along, whether its milk agreed with it, whether it had begun to teethe, whether it would speak German or some foreign tongue, and so on.

In order to quiet them, Marian told them that Meta was a poor relative and that she was bringing up the child at her own expense. It was not difficult to make this story seem plausible, for Meta had very little to do with her daughter. Shortly after her confinement, she got a job with a baker over in DinkelsbÜhl, and never visited Eva more than once a month. She cared very little for the child. A young fellow in the bakery had fallen in love with Meta, and wanted to marry her and move to America.

At Christmas they were married, and left the country at once. Marian was glad of it: the child now belonged entirely to her.

Though the people soon became accustomed to the existence of their diminutive fellow-townswoman, Eva was and remained the mysterious child of Eschenbach.

IX

The opera company made its rounds through the small cities that lie between the Danube and the Main, the Saale and the Neckar—and there are many of them,—its stay in any one place depending naturally on the interest shown by the public.

“The province is the enchanted Sleeping Beauty,” said the impresario DÖrmaul to Wurzelmann and Daniel, “the province is still asleep, and you must rouse it from its slumbers by pressing the kiss of the Muse on its forehead.”

But the impresario was unwilling to open his pockets. The princes who were to release Sleeping Beauty did not have sufficient means to make a presentable appearance, while their retinue was seedy-looking indeed.

The tenor had long since passed the zenith of his career. His massive paunch placed deadening strictures on his credentials as the impersonator of heroes. The buffo was an inveterate toper who had often been placed behind bars by the police for his nocturnal excesses. The barytone had a big lawsuit on his hands about an estate; his lawyers were two stars of obscurity from a small village; and at times he became so vexed at the cuts of his opponents that he lost his voice. The soprano was incessantly quarrelling with her colleagues, and the alto was an intriguing vixen quite without talent. In addition to these there were a dozen or so super-numeraries and under-studies, who were bored, who played practical jokes on each other, drew starvation wages, and had never learned anything.

The musicians were also a sorry lot. It was not rare that one or the other of them had pawned his instrument. Once a performance had to be postponed because the violinists had stayed over their time at a village dance where they were playing in order to add to their paltry income. The inspector, who was scene-shifter, promoter, ticket seller, and publicity agent all in one, and who was not equal to any of these positions, took French leave in the second year and ran off with one of the chorus girls, taking the box-office receipts for the evening with him.

One time the costumes were sent to the wrong address, with the result that Boieldieu’s “La Dame Blanche” had to be played in woollen frocks, patched velvet skirts, filthy cotton blouses, and French wadding.

Another time the mob in “Martha” consisted of a distempered woman, a waiter brought in at the last minute from a herring restaurant, and the door-keeper of an orphanage: the chorus had gone on a strike because their salaries had been held up.

In Karlstadt the final act of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” could not be played, because during the intermission Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly had got into a fight, and the lady had scratched a huge piece of skin from the singer’s nose.

If these musical strollers, as acting-director Wurzelmann called the company, nevertheless made some money, it was due to the superhuman efforts of Daniel. Wurzelmann was always mixed up in some kind of love affair, introduced in time a ruinous system of favouritism, and became lazier and lazier as the weeks passed by.

Daniel had to pull the singers out of their beds to get them to go to rehearsals; Daniel had to help out with the singing when the chorus was too weak; Daniel had to distribute the rÔles, tame down refractory women, and make brainless dilettants subordinate their noisy opinions to the demands of a work which he himself generally detested. He had to drill beginners, abbreviate scores, transpose voices, and produce effects with lamentably inadequate material. And from morning to night he had to wage war eternal against libellous action, inattention, and inability.

Nobody loved him for this; they merely feared him. They swore they would take vengeance on him, but they knuckled under whenever they seemed to have a chance. He had a habit of treating them with crushing coldness, he could make them look like criminals. He had a look of icy contempt that made them clench their fists when his eye fell on them. But they bowed before a power which seemed uncanny to them, though it consisted in nothing more than the fact that he did his duty while they did not.

At the close of each quarter, the impresario DÖrmaul appeared on the scene to take invoice in person. His presence was invariably celebrated by a gala performance of “Fra Diavolo,” or “The Daughter of the Regiment,” or “Frou Frou.” On these occasions the buffo did not get drunk, the barytone rested from the torments of his lawsuit, the alto had a charming smile for the sympathetic house, the soprano was as peaceful as a mine immediately after an explosion. Not one of the chorus stayed too long in the cafÉ; and since Wurzelmann directed, and the orchestra did not have to feel the burning, basilisk eye of Kapellmeister Nothafft resting on it and floating over it, it played with more precision and produced a more pleasing feast for the ears than ordinarily.

DÖrmaul was not stingy with his praise. “Bravo Wurzelmann,” he cried, “one more short year of hard work, and I’ll get you a position in the Royal Opera House.”

“Nothafft will likewise rise to fame and office,” he said, “although I was so stupid as to publish his music, and now all this waste paper is lying in my shop like a pound of brick cheese in a sick stomach.”

The impresario DÖrmaul wore black and white striped trousers of imported cut, a vest that looked like a bit of tapestry made of pressed leather, a massive gold watch-chain from which dangled countless fobs, a blood red tie with a diamond as big as the Koh-i-noor and as false as an April sun, and a grey silk tile hat which he lifted only when in the presence of privy councillors, generals, and police presidents.

To a man of this kind Daniel had the boldness to remark: “Had you eaten cheese you would at least have digested it. Your crowded shops are after all more desirable in my estimation than many a head which would remain empty even if some one stuffed the whole of the ‘Passion of St. Matthew’ into it.”

DÖrmaul decided to laugh. “Oho, my good fellow,” he said, and pushed his tile hat on to the back of his head, “you are getting all puffed up. Look out that you don’t burst. You remember the story of HÄnschen: He was awfully proud of his porridge while sitting behind the stove; but when he went out on to the street, he fell into the puddle.”

The little slave tittered. Daniel had known for a long time that Wurzelmann was working against him. Quite innocently, to be sure, for half souls can admire and betray at the same time.

“Envy is my only virtue,” said Wurzelmann quite openly, “I am a genius at envying.”

Daniel was not equal to such cynicism. He was stupefied by Wurzelmann’s remark, but he did not break with the little slave; he continued to use him. He was the only individual with whom he could speak of himself and his work. And though he was overburdened, owing to his present position, he nevertheless managed to steal a few hours every day for his own work. And the pressure from all sides fanned the flame within him.

It was then that he staked out his field in order to be master in his own realm; he turned to the song; he chose the clear, restrained forms of chamber music; he studied with unwavering industry the old masters; he deduced from their works the right rules of composition; and he set these up before him like a dam against arbitrariness and Æsthetic demoralisation.

He was not unmindful of the fact that by so doing he was cutting himself off from association with men, and renouncing, probably forever, the satisfaction that comes from monetary reward and outward success. He knew, too, that he was not making his life easier by adopting this course, nor was he gaining the popular favour of the emotionalists.

When he would sit in a cafÉ late at night and show Wurzelmann one score after another, sing a few bars in order to bring out the quality of a song, improvise an accompaniment, praise a melody, or explain the peculiarity of a certain rhythm, he surprised the little slave, and drove him into an attitude of self-defence. All this was fundamentally new to Wurzelmann. If Daniel proved that the new was not new after all, that the trouble lay in the fact that the deranged and shattered souls of the present century had lost the power to assimilate unbroken lines in their complete purity, Wurzelmann at once became an advocate of modern freedom, insisting that each individual should be allowed to do all that his innate talent enabled him to vindicate.

Daniel remained unconvinced. Was not the whole of life, the rich contents of human existence, to be found in the beautiful vessel that had been proved long ago? Could any one say that he was displaying a spirit of greediness in his love for the classical? And were joy and sorrow, however intense, less perceptible when expressed through a concise, well ordered medium? “What a distorted view a man takes when he becomes so narrow-minded,” thought Daniel. “His ambition makes it impossible for him to feel; his very wit militates against clear thinking.”

Thus they went from town to town, month after month, year after year. The company had in time its traditions, its chronique scandaleuse, its oft-tested drawing cards, its regular patrons, its favourite stands, and its stands that it avoided if humanly possible.

The local paper greeted them editorially; the children stood on the sidewalks to gape their fill at the ladies from the theatre; the retired major bought a reserved seat for the first performance; the barber offered his services; and the faculty of the Latin School held a special meeting to decide whether they should permit their pupils to go to the opera or not. The Young Men’s Christian Association voiced its protest against the nude shoulders of the artistes; the members of the Casino turned up their noses at the achievements of the company; the police insisted that the booth or hotel lobby in which they performed should be fireproof; the wife of the mining engineer fell in love with the barytone, and her husband hired a number of hoodlums to take their places in the gallery and hoot and hiss when the time came. And those who nag under any circumstances requested more cheerfulness. They found the “Czar and Zimmermann” too dull, the “Muette de Portici” too hackneyed. They insisted on “Madame Angot” and “Orpheus in the Under World.”

There was always something wrong.

Daniel shuddered at the mere presence of these people; he was repelled by their occupations, their amusements, and the cadavers of their ideals. He did not like the way they laughed; nor could he stand their dismal feelings. He despised the houses out of which they crept, the detectives at their windows, their butcher shops and hotels, their newspapers, their Sundays and their work days. The world was pressing hard upon him. He had to look these people straight in the face, and they compelled him to haggle with them for money, words, feelings, and ideas.

He learned in time, however, to see other things: the forests on the banks of the Main; the great meadows in the hills of Franconia; the melancholy plains of Central Germany; the richly variegated slopes of the Jura Mountains; the old cities with their walls and cathedrals, their gloomy alleys and deserted castles. In time he came to see people in a different and easier light. He saw the young and the old, the fair and the homely, the cheerful and the sad, the poor—and the rich so far away and peaceful. They gave him, without discrimination, of their wealth and their poverty. They laid their youth and their old age, their beauty and their ugliness, their joys and their sorrows, at his feet.

And the country gave him the forests and the fields, the brooks and the rivers, the clouds and the birds, and everything that is under the earth.

X

It was winter. The company came to Ansbach, where they were to play in the former Margrave Theatre. “FreischÜtz” was to be given, and Daniel had held a number of special rehearsals.

But a violent snow storm broke out on the day of the performance; scarcely two dozen people attended.

How differently the violins sounded in this auditorium! The voices were, as it seemed, automatically well balanced; there was in them an element of calm and assurance. The orchestra? Daniel had so charmed it that it obeyed him as if it were a single instrument. At the close of the last act, an old, grey-haired man stepped up to Daniel, smiled, took him by the hand, and thanked him. It was Spindler.

Daniel went home with him; they talked about the past, the future, men and music. They could not stop talking; nor could the snow stop falling. This did not disturb them. They met again on the following day; but at the end of the week Spindler was taken ill, and had to go to bed.

As Daniel entered the residence of his old friend one morning, he learned that he had died suddenly the night before. It had been a peaceful death.

On the third day, Daniel followed the funeral procession to the cemetery. When he left the cemetery—there were but few people at the funeral—he went out into the snow-covered fields, and spent the remainder of the day walking around.

That same night he sat down in his wretched quarters, and began his composition of Goethe’s “Harzreise im Winter.” It was one of the profoundest and rarest of works ever created by a musician, but it was destined, like the most of Daniel’s compositions, not to be preserved to posterity. This was due to a tragic circumstance.

XI

In the spring of 1886, the company went north to Hesse, then to Thuringia, gave performances in a few of the towns in the Spessart region and along the Rhoen, the box receipts growing smaller and smaller all the while. DÖrmaul had not been seen since the previous autumn; the salaries had not been paid for some time. Wurzelmann prophesied a speedy and fatal end of the enterprise.

An engagement of unusual length had been planned for the town of Ochsenfurt. The company placed its last hopes on the series, although it was already June and very warm. The thick, muggy air of the gloomy hall in which they were to play left even the enthusiasts without much desire to brighten up the monotony of provincial life by the enjoyment of grand opera.

They drew smaller houses from day to day. Finally there was no more money in the till; they did not even have enough to move to the next town. To make matters worse, the tenor was taken down with typhus, and the other singers refused to sing until they had been paid. Daniel wrote to DÖrmaul, but received no reply. Wurzelmann, instead of helping, fanned the easily inflamed minds of the company into a fire of noise, malevolence, and hostility. They demanded that Daniel give them what was due them, besieged him in his hotel, and finally brought matters to such a pitch that the whole town was busied with their difficulties.

One afternoon, a stately gentleman between fifty-five and fifty-six years old entered Daniel’s room, and introduced himself as Sylvester von Erfft, the owner of an estate.

His mission was as follows: Every year, at this season, the Chancellor of the German Empire was taking the cure at the nearby Kissingen Baths. Herr von Erfft had made his acquaintance, and the Prince, an enthusiastic landowner, had expressed the desire to visit Herr von Erfft’s estate, the management of which was widely known as excellent in every way. In order to celebrate the coming of the distinguished guest with befitting dignity, it had been decided not to have any tawdry fireworks or cheap shouting, but to give a special performance of the “Marriage of Figaro” in a rococo pavilion that belonged to the Erfft estate.

“This idea comes from my wife,” said Herr von Erfft. “Some ladies and gentlemen of noble birth who belong to our circle will sing the various parts, and my daughter Sylvia, who studied for two years in Milan with Gallifati, will take the part of the page. The only thing we lack is a trained orchestra. For this reason I have come to you, Herr Kapellmeister, to see if you could not bring your orchestra over and play for us.”

Daniel, though pleased with the kindly disposition of Herr von Erfft, could not make him any definite promise, for he felt bound to the helpless, if not hopeless, opera company now in his care. Herr von Erfft inquired more closely into the grounds of his doubt as to his ability to have his orchestra undertake the special engagement, and then asked him whether he would accept his help. “Gladly,” replied Daniel, “but such help as you can offer us will hardly be of any avail. Our chief is a hardened sinner.”

Herr von Erfft went with Daniel to the mayor; a half-hour later an official dispatch was on its way to the impresario DÖrmaul. It was couched in language that was sufficient to inspire any citizen with respect, referred to the desperate plight in which the company then found itself, and demanded in a quite imperious tone that something be done at once.

DÖrmaul was frightened; he sent the necessary money by return wire. In another telegram to Wurzelmann he declared the company dissolved; most of the contracts had expired, and those members of the company who put in claims were satisfied in one way or another.

Daniel was free. Wurzelmann said to him on taking leave: “Nothafft, you will never amount to anything. I have been disappointed in you. You have far too much conscience. You cannot make children out of morality, much less music. The swamp is quaggy, the summit rocky. Commit some act of genuine swinishness, so that you may put a little ginger into your life.”

Daniel laid his hand on his shoulder, looked at him with his cold eyes, and said: “Judas.”

“All right, Judas so far as I am concerned,” said Wurzelmann. “I was not born to be nailed to the cross; I am much more for the feasts with the Pharisees.”

He had got a position as critic on the Phoenix, one of the best known musical magazines.

Daniel found the members of the orchestra only too glad to take the excursion over to Herr von Erfft’s. They were put up in a hotel; Daniel himself lived in the castle. The rehearsals were held with zeal and seriousness. Though the name of the Chancellor was still darkened by the clouds of political life, by the enmity of his opponents, by pettiness and misunderstanding, all these young people felt the power of the great Immortal, and were delighted with the idea of meaning something to him, even in the guise of an imaginary world and for only a fleeting hour or two. Agatha von Erfft, the wife of Herr von Erfft, was indefatigable in preparing the costumes, surmounting technical difficulties, and entertaining her guests. The twenty-four-year-old Sylvia had inherited neither the strength of her mother nor the amiability of her father: she was delicate and reserved. Nevertheless, she managed to put a great deal of winsomeness and roguishness into the rÔle of the cherub. Even her parents were surprised at the unexpected wealth of her natural ability. Moreover, her voice was velvety and well trained. Accustomed as he had been for years to the mediocre accomplishments of sore throats, Daniel nodded approval when she sang.

The other members of the improvised company he handled with no greater indulgence than he had shown the singers of the DÖrmaul troupe. They had to put up with his gruffness and snappishness, and to do it without a murmur. Herr von Erfft attended the rehearsals regularly, observing Daniel at all times with quiet admiration. If Daniel spoke to any one with such seeming harshness that the case was taken up with Herr von Erfft, the latter said: “Let the man have his way; he knows his business; there are not many like him.”

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

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

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

Forgotten, forgotten....

XII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He turned around, and struck a minor chord.

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

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

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

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

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

XIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVI

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

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

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

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

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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