Part 84

He stood for a long while and looked at Eleanore as she walked down the street. There could be no doubt but that something in her general bearing and her face had drawn his attention to her; had awakened in him a feeling that was nobler than mere curiosity or the satisfaction an idler derives from gaping.

The young man finally began to move; he walked rather stiffly across the square and entered the florist’s shop. A few minutes later the florist, a man past middle age, with the typical toper’s nose, threw open his door and removed his cap, actions which in addition to his fawning bow were unmistakable proof to the merchants on either side of him that it was no ordinary sale he had just made. The young man went his way, ambling along in shiftless indifference to where he was or the time of day.

The next morning the florist’s errand boy came to Eleanore, and told her that his chief had something very important to say to her, and that she should come at once. Eleanore followed the call without delay. As she entered the shop, the florist greeted her with unusual politeness, and told her that a man who took a special fancy to the kind of flowers she had shown him the day before had been there and placed an order for two such bouquets, or even three, a week at twenty marks each. He advised her to exercise all diligence in making the flowers and said that when such a rain of good fortune descended upon one it was wise to let other things take care of themselves. The only condition the florist imposed on her was absolute silence. The customer did not wish his name to be known, nor did he wish to be seen. He remarked casually that there was manifestly some whim or crotchet back of the man’s action, such as is so frequently the case with aristocratic people.

Who was happier than Eleanore! She never bothered herself for a minute about the illogical and legendary element in the offer of a man who only a day before had appeared so shrewd and cautious. She drank in every word of the florist’s detailed statement, and merely believed that in this city, among its inhabitants, there was an eccentric fellow who was willing to pay such a princely price for her flowers simply because he liked flowers and was pleased with the way she put them up. Though she had not been spoiled by fortune, the transformation that had suddenly taken place in her circumstances awakened in her not the slightest suspicion or surprise. She was too happy to be distrustful, too grateful to become inquisitive. Her thoughts were on Daniel, who, she felt, was saved. The whole way home she smiled to herself as if lost in dreams.

Evening after evening she sat with the flowers she had gathered in the forenoon from the forests, the meadows, and the gardens out by the city fortress, where an old gardener went with her and picked out the choicest specimens for her. He had a crippled son who fell in love with Eleanore and always stood in the door and smiled at her when she came. He promised he would get her flowers from the green house during the winter.

The butcher was paid, the baker was paid; the druggist was paid, and so was the rent. Philippina shook her head, and swore there was something wrong. She was convinced that it would all come out some day, even if you had to scratch the dung hill to get at the secret. She told the people about a ghost that carried on every night up in the attic; and once when the moon was shining she came running into the room and swore that a bony finger had rapped on the window.

Eleanore bound roses and gilliflowers, tulips and pansies, mosses, ferns, and what-not into beautiful tapestried pictures, or wound them into wreaths and garlands. She gave herself up to this novel occupation with the sacrificial love of a woman of her type; and at times she became dizzy from so much fragrance. But this mattered not. She arranged her flowers; and then she would lean out of the window, and sing gently into the night.

Daniel was ignorant of what she was doing; he had not troubled himself about the distressing poverty of past weeks; he did not concern himself now with their abundance; where it came from he never asked.

VIII

Eberhard von Auffenberg had returned to the city shortly after the death of Gertrude Nothafft. The last large sum he had received from Herr Carovius, now nearly a year ago, he had almost used up. He found Herr Carovius quite changed in his attitude toward him. Herr Carovius declared that he was bankrupt, that he could not get any more money for him. Instead of complaining or boasting, or flattering his princely friend, or trying to incite him to activity of some kind, as he had been accustomed to do, he wrapped himself in a silence that could not be regarded as a favourable omen.

Eberhard had no desire to beg. Herr Carovius’s personality was so disagreeable to him that he refused to investigate the cause of his novel behaviour. He let his thoughts take their own course; and they drifted into other channels.

The gossip afloat concerning Eleanore had naturally reached his ears. Herr Carovius had seen to it that there was no lack of insinuations, either written or oral. But Eberhard had ignored them. Offensive insults that had dared attach themselves to Eleanore seemed to him as incredible as litter from the street on the radiant moon.

One day he had to call on Herr Carovius because of a note that had been protested. They discussed the affair in a dry, business-like way, and then, all of a sudden, Herr Carovius fixed his piercing eyes on the Baron, walked around the table time after time, dressed in his sleeping gown, and told, without the omission of a single detail, of the lamentable death of Daniel Nothafft’s young wife.

He became highly excited; why, it would be hard to say. “Let us hope that the Kapellmeisterette will come to his senses now,” he cried in a falsetto voice. “He is already on the point of starvation; ah, believe me, he is nearly done for. It will be necessary to take up a collection for the unrecognised genius. He has already put one of his women in the grave, the other is still kicking. By the way, how do you like her, the angel? Are you not a bit sorry for the neat little halo that now hangs like a piece of castoff clothing on the bedpost of an adulteress? Of course, geniuses are allowed to do as they please. O Eleanore, bloody lie that you are, you hypocritical soft, sneaking, slimy lie—Eleanore!”

With that Eberhard stepped up very calmly to the unleashed demon in pajamas, seized him by the throat, and held him with such a fierce and unrelenting grip that Herr Carovius sank to his knees, while his face became as blue as a boiled carp. After this he was remarkably quiet; he crept away. At times he tittered like a simpleton; at times a venomous glance shot forth from under his eyelids. But that was all.

Eberhard poured some water in a basin, dipped his hands in it, dried them, and went away.

The picture of the whining man with the puffed and swollen eyes and the blue face was indelibly stamped on Eberhard’s memory. He had felt a greedy, voluptuous desire to commit murder. He felt he was not merely punishing and passing final judgment on his own tormentor and persecutor, but on the hidden enemy of humanity, the arch-criminal of the age, the destroyer of all noble seed.

And yet the exalted outburst of Herr Carovius had precisely the effect that Eberhard had least expected. His confidence in Eleanore’s innocence had been shaken. There may have been in Herr Carovius’s voice, despite the slanderous wrath with which his cowardly tongue was coated, something that sounded truer than the wretch himself suspected. Eberhard saw just then, for the first time in his life, the adored figure of the girl as a human being like all other human beings; and as if through a distant vision he experienced in his heart what had taken place.

His illusions were destroyed.

In his soul he had gone through the trials of renunciation long ago. His passionate wishes of former times had gone through a process of weakening from loss of blood. He had learned to bow to the inevitable; he had made a special effort to acquire this bit of earthly wisdom. When he surveyed the life he had lived in the past five years, it resembled, despite its flux and the incessant change from city to city and country to country, a sojourn in a room with closed doors and drawn shades.

When he had returned to the city, which he loved simply because Eleanore lived in it, he had had no intention of reminding Eleanore of the expiration of the time mutually agreed upon. He felt that it would be a banal display of poor taste to appear before her once again as an awkward, jilted suitor, and try to reconnect the thread where it had been so ruthlessly broken five years ago. He had intended not to disturb her or worry her in any way. But to go to her and speak with her, that had been the one bright ray of hope in all these empty years.

After the scene with Herr Carovius he decided quite firmly to keep away from Eleanore.

His ready cash had shrunk to a few hundred marks. He discharged his servants, disposed of some of his jewelry, and rented one of those little houses that are stuck on the rocks up by the castle like so many wasp nests. The house he took had been occupied before him by the Pfragners, and with its three rooms was not much larger than a fair-sized cage in a menagerie. But he had taken it into his head to live there, and that was all there was to it. He bought some old furniture, and adorned the slanting walls of the dilapidated barracks with such pictures as he had.

One evening there was a knock at the green door of the cottage. Eberhard opened, and saw Herr Carovius standing before him.

Herr Carovius entered the Baron’s doll house, looked around in astonishment, and, pale as a sheet, said: “So help me God, it seems to me you are trying to play the rôle of a hermit. This won’t do; this is no place for a Baron; I will not stand for it.”

Eberhard reached for the book he had been reading, a volume of Carl du Prel, and read on without replying to Herr Carovius or even taking notice of the fact that he was present.

Herr Carovius tripped from one foot to the other. “Perhaps the Baron will be so good as to take a look at his account,” he said in a beseeching tone. “I am in a tight place. My capital is gone, and my debts in the shape of interest have been swelling like the Pegnitz in the spring of the year. Would you like to know what I have been living on for the last three months? I have been living on turnips, potato peelings, and brick cheese; that has been my daily diet; and I have submitted to it for the sake of my Baron.”

“I am not a bit interested in what you have been eating,” said the Baron arrogantly, and kept on reading.