Daniel had hesitated for a long while about making use of the letter of
introduction from Frau von Erfft. Gertrude then took to begging him to
go to the Baroness. "If I go merely to please you, my action will avenge
itself on you," he said.
"If I understood why you hesitate, I would not ask you," she replied in
a tone of evident discomfort.
"I found so much there in Erfft," said he, "so much human kindness that
was new to me; I dislike the idea of seeing some ulterior motive back of
it, or of putting one there myself. Do you understand now?" She nodded.
"But must is stronger than may," he concluded, and went.
The Baroness became quite interested in his case. The position of second
Kapellmeister at the City Theatre was vacant, and she tried to have
Daniel appointed to it. She was promised that it would be given to him;
but the usual intrigues were spun behind her back; and when she urged
that the matter be settled immediately and in favour of her candidate,
she was fed on dissembling consolation. She was quite surprised to be
brought face to face with hostile opposition, which seemed to spring
from every side as if by agreement against the young musician. Not a
single one of his enemies, however, allowed themselves to be seen, and
no one heard from by correspondence. It was the first time that she had
come in conflict with the world in a business way; there was something
touching in her indignation at the display of cowardly fraud.
Finally, after a long, and for her humiliating, interview with that
chief of cosmopolitan brokers, Alexander Doermaul, Daniel's engagement
for the coming spring was agreed upon.
In the meantime the Baroness took lessons from Daniel. She expressed a
desire to familiarise herself with the standard piano compositions, and
to be given a really practical introduction to their meaning and the
right method of interpreting them.
It was long before she became accustomed to his cold and morose
sternness. She had the feeling that he was pulling her out of a nice
warm bath into a cold, cutting draught. She longed to return to her
twilights, her ecstatic moods, her melancholy reveries.
Once he explained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement
of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut
the piano with a bang, and said: "Adieu, Baroness." He did not return
until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.
"Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time," he thought, though he did not
fail to appreciate the Baroness's human dignity. The eight hours a month
were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an
hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him
alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.
A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and
shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and
much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.
Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain
crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense
admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as
humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her
choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of
Schumann's "Carneval" for her, a piece of music of which she was
passionately fond.
Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always
walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his
mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was
always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be
alone. He bent the rim of his hat down so that it covered his forehead.
His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.
At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into
space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about
him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: "Tell
me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?"
This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just
before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so
aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle
of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so
old. This is the light in which we must see him.
V
The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the
street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.
With very limited means, but with diligence and pleasure, Gertrude had
done all in her power to make the apartment as comfortable as possible.
Though the ceilings were low and the walls almost always damp, the rooms
seemed after all quite home-like and attractive.
In Daniel's study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it
dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the
general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of
his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of
Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the
face of the father turned toward the mask of Zingarella as if to ask who
and what it was. The mask hung on the other side of the room from the
oil painting; its unbroken smile was lost in the shadows.
Gertrude had to do all the household work; they could not afford a
servant. In the years of Daniel's absence, however, she had learned to
copy notes. Herr Seelenfromm, assistant to the apothecary Pflaum, had
taught her. He was a cousin of Frau Ruebsam, and she had become
acquainted with him through Eleanore. In his leisure hours he composed
waltzes and marches, and dedicated them to the princes and princesses of
the royal family. He also dedicated one to Gertrude. It was entitled
"Feenzauber," and was a gavotte.
When Daniel learned of her accomplishment, he was so astonished that he
threw his hands above his head. The rare being looked up at him
intoxicated with joy. "I will help you," she said, and copied his notes
for him.
When they walked along the streets she would close her eyes at times. A
melody floated by her which she had never before been able to
understand. As she bought her vegetables and tried to drive a bargain
with the old market woman, her soul was full of song.
Certain tones and combinations of tones took on definite shapes in her
mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily
veiled woman; the middle E resembled a young man who was stretching his
arms. In chords, harmonies, and harmonic transformations these figures
were set in motion, the motion depending on the character of the
composition: a procession of mourning figures between clouds and stars;
wild animals spurred on by the huntsmen who were riding them; maidens
throwing flowers from the windows of a palace; men and women plunging
into an abyss in one mass of despairing humanity; weeping men and
laughing women, wrestlers and ball players, dancing couples and grape
pickers. The pause appealed to her as a man who climbs naked from a deep
subterranean shaft, carrying a burning torch in his hand; the trill
seemed like a bird that anxiously flutters about its nest.
All of Daniel's compositions came close to her heart; all his pictures
were highly coloured; his figures seemed to be full of blood. If they
remained dead and distant, her sympathy vanished; her face became tired
and empty. Without having spoken a word with each other, Daniel would
know that he was on the wrong track. But all this bound him to the young
woman with hoops of steel; he came to regard her as the creature given
him of God to act as his living conscience and infallible if mute judge.
He hated her when her feelings remained unmoved. If he at last came to
see, after much introspection, that she was right, then he would have
liked to fall down and worship the unknown power that was so inexorable
in pointing him the way.
Spindler had a beautiful harp which he had bequeathed to Daniel in his
will. It had remained in Ansbach in the possession of the old lady who
kept house for him. Daniel had forgotten all about the harp. After his
marriage he had it sent to him.
He kept it in the living room; Gertrude was fond of looking at it. It
enticed her. One day she sat down and tried to draw tones from its
strings. She touched the strings very gently, and was charmed with the
melody that came from them. Gradually she learned the secret; she
discovered the law. An innate talent made the instrument submissive to
her; she was able to express on it all the longings and emotions she had
experienced in her dark and lonely hours.
She generally played very softly; she never tried intricate melodies,
for the harp was adapted to the expression of simple, dream-like
harmonies. The tones were wafted out into the hall and up the stairs;
they greeted Daniel as he entered the old house.
When he came into the room, Gertrude was sitting in a corner by the
stove, the harp between her knees. She smiled mysteriously to herself;
her hands, like strange beings loosed from her body, sought chords and
melodies that were his, and which she was trying to translate to her own
world of dreams.