A few weeks later a real singer came to Daniel. She sang several of the
songs he had written. He had thought they were completely forgotten by
everybody. Her art was not merely perfect; it was wonderful.
It was a very mysterious visit the singer paid him. One afternoon during
a fearful snow storm the bell rang; and when Gertrude opened the door,
she saw a woman wearing a heavy black veil standing before her, who said
she wished to speak to Kapellmeister Nothafft. Gertrude took her up to
Daniel's room. The stranger told Daniel she had been wishing to make his
acquaintance for a long time, and, now on her way to Italy, she had been
detained in the city for a few days by the illness of a near friend.
This, she said, she regarded as a hint from fate itself. She had come to
extend him her greetings, and particularly to thank him for his songs, a
copy of which a friend had been good enough to present to her at a time
when she was living under the weight of a great sorrow.
She spoke with an accent that had a Northern note in it, but easily and
fluently; she gave the impression of a woman who had seen a great deal
of the world and had profited by her travels. Daniel asked her with whom
he had the pleasure of speaking, but she smiled, and asked permission to
conceal her name for the present. She said that it really did not make
much difference, and that it might be more agreeable to him later to
think that an unknown woman had come to him to express her appreciation
than to recall that Fraeulein So-and-So had been there: she hoped that
her very anonymity would make a more lasting impression on his memory
than could be made by a woman of whom he knew only what everybody knows.
The mingling of the jocose and the serious, of the mind and the heart,
in the words of the stranger pleased Daniel. Though his replies were
curt and cool, it was plain that she was affording him much pleasure:
she was reminding him of the fact that his creations had not after all
sunk into an echoless abyss. In course of time, the conversation turned
again to the songs; she said she would like very much to sing some of
them for him. Daniel was pleased. He got the score, sat down at the
piano, and the enigmatic woman began to sing. At the very first note
Daniel was enraptured; he had never heard such a voice: so soft, so
pure, so emotional, so unlike the conventional product of the
conservatory. As soon as she had finished the first song, he looked up
at her in unaffected embarrassment, and murmured: "Who are you, anyhow?
Who are you?"
"No investigations or cross-questioning, please," replied the singer,
and, blushing at the praise Daniel was bestowing on her by his very
behaviour, she laughed and said, "The next song, please, that one by
Eichendorff!"
Gertrude, who had not wished to remain longer than was necessary
because of the unkempt impression she knew she made, had hastened down
to the kitchen. And now Eleanore came in, after having knocked at the
door with all imaginable timidity. She had heard the strange voice, had
rushed out into the hall, and, unable to restrain her curiosity any
longer, had come in to see the singer.
Daniel nodded to her with radiant eyes, the stranger greeted her
cordially though calmly, and then began to sing the next song; after
this she took up the third, and so on until she had sung the complete
cycle of six. Old Jordan was standing behind the door; he had his hands
pressed to his face and was listening; he was much moved.
"Well, I must be going," said the strange woman, after she had finished
the last song. She shook hands with Daniel, and said: "It has been a
beautiful hour."
"It has been one of the most beautiful hours I have ever experienced,"
said Daniel.
"Farewell!"
"Farewell!"
The strange woman went away, leaving behind her not a trace of anything
other than the memory of a joy that grew more fabulous as the
storm-tossed years rolled by. Daniel never saw her again, and never
heard from her again.