For nine long years, that is, from the time she was fifteen until she
was twenty-four, his sister Marguerite kept house for him. She got his
breakfast, made his bed, darned his socks, and brushed his clothes; and
all he knew about her was that she had yellowish hair, a skin full of
freckles, and a timid, child-like voice. His astonishment was
consequently unbounded when Andreas Doederlein called one day and
proposed to her. He had moved into the house the year before. Herr
Carovius was amazed for the very simple reason that he had never known
Marguerite except as a fourteen-year-old girl.
He took her to task. With unusual effort she summoned the courage to
tell him that she was going to marry Doederlein. "You are a shameless
prostitute," he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Doederlein
the door. The wedding took place.
One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas
Doederlein, being in an unusually happy mood, went to the piano, and
began playing the shepherd's motif from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."
Herr Carovius sprang to his feet as if stung by a viper, and exclaimed:
"Stop playing that foul magic! You know as well as you are living that I
don't believe in it."
"What do you mean, brother?" asked Andreas Doederlein, his head bowed in
grief.
"What are you trying to do? Are you trying to teach me something about
this poisoner of wells?" shouted Herr Carovius, and his face took on the
enraged expression of a hunchback who has just been taunted about his
deformity. "Does the professor imagine that he knows better than I do
who this Richard Wagner is, this comedian, this Jew who goes about
masked as the Germanic Messiah, this cacaphonist, this bungler, botcher,
and bully, this court sycophant, this Pulchinello who pokes fun at the
whole German Empire and the rest of Europe led about by the nose, this
Richard Wagner? Very well, if you have anything to teach me about him,
go on! Proceed! I am listening. Go on! Pluck up your courage." With this
he leaned back in his chair, and laughed a laughter punctuated with
asthmatic sighs, his hands in the meantime resting folded across his
stomach.
Andreas Doederlein rose to his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips
of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down
upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crushing
between two finger nails. "Oh, ho," he said, "how interesting! Upon my
word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some
one were to offer me all the money in the world, I should not like to be
so ... interesting. Not I. And you, Marguerite, would you like to be so
interesting?"
There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority.
It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was
immediately converted into a gurgling titter. He opened his eyes wide
and rolled them behind his nose-glasses, thus making himself look like a
water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as
she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding
her hands, glanced in helpless fashion from her brother to her husband,
and dropped her head before them.
Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Doederlein one of hatred? It
was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with
which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky
wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous mass of flesh on his
neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If
Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with
crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pass his
door with not a thought of entering it.
When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings,
he squinted into the corner, tittered, and made bold to say: "Well, my
congratulations. It is good that the Doederleins are not to become
extinct, for so long as one of them is living, _plaisir_ will not have
vanished from the earth."
Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or
around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured
forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to
be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly
calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She
soon stopped playing at home.
Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Doederlein wedding. Herr
Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea.
The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle's
benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up
like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of
course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius
said: "Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little
toad could croak so beautifully."
Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to
attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he
looked into Marguerite's radiant face, a certain disappointment in
life--a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which
delighted him.