AFTERNew Year he had organized a little informal dancing club among the Americans. He called it the Cinderella Cotillion Coterie, in alliterative compliment to the daintiness of the ladies. He was the self-constituted secretary and sole official.
For the birthday of the Father of our country he sent out to the members a rollicking printed invitation reading:
In honor of our George's birthday, which comes as usual this year on February the twenty-second, the inimitable CCCs will hold one of their regular reunions in pumps, beginning punctually at nine. Full beer orchestra as usual. No flowers or singing of hymns.By orderJames Alexander Deming, Sec., CCC.R. S. V. P.—the Senate and the Roman People.
In honor of our George's birthday, which comes as usual this year on February the twenty-second, the inimitable CCCs will hold one of their regular reunions in pumps, beginning punctually at nine. Full beer orchestra as usual. No flowers or singing of hymns.
By order
James Alexander Deming, Sec., CCC.
R. S. V. P.—the Senate and the Roman People.
The notice at least gave evidence that Jim had been in Italy.
Several weeks after the pleasant event, when he had forgotten all about it, he was loafing in his room one morning after breakfast, smoking an eccentric pipe from his collection, and comforting himself over his decision once more that German teachers and grammars are a failure.
A thump was heard at his door. He called outHerein!whereat a person in uniform strode in and stuck into Deming's hands a majestic communication from which he made out with some difficulty that he was peremptorily ordered to appear at Police Headquarters at eleven that forenoon. Fully conscious of the political innocence of his conduct, he welcomed this new diversion and, humming the latest opera bouffe air, he dressed in his best with a posy in his lapel.
His gay feelings were a little dampened at the Platz where he encountered a massive solemnity and sullen looks as if he were an arch criminal of State. A ponderous minor individual, not unarmed, commanded him to be seated in front of his desk and, eying him sternly, handed over one of Jim's invitations to the George Washington party.
"Do you know of this?"
"Yes, sir," replied Jim, surprised that this harmless missive had turned up among the Police, and wondering what it could all be about.
"Have you authorization?"
"Authorization, sir?"
"Whatisthis?" roared the petty functionary.
"Why, nothing at all. It means dance—ball—a little dance we had."
"Dance—ball." The other repeated the words with a severity that champed upon its bits. "Are you this party?" He tried to pronounce Jim's formidable name on the card.
"Yes, sir."
"What does this mean—Sec., CCC?" he roared again.
Deming was getting upset, confused besides by his inadequate vocabulary.
"I don't know in German, but in English we say Secretary of the Cinderella Cotillion Coterie."
"Ah, you saySecretary. It is English." And an enlightened satisfaction furrowed the hardened face of the interlocutor. Then, abruptly to Deming's relief:
"You may go."
As Jim rose to leave he found a court flunkey at either elbow. They escorted him out with a military precision and flourish. He congratulated himself on the easy way he had got through with it. He must have somehow managed it pretty well.
Two days later, in the evening, an attendant from the Intelligence Office ushered himself into Deming's room without announcement. He bore a summons for the next day.
"Well, of all the damned fools!" Jim exclaimed to himself. "They don't seem to know I'm a free American citizen. I'll tell them this time. They are getting too familiar—walking into a chap's room without waiting to be invited."
This time he was brought before a higher official with a more exalted mien, and manners of inextinguishable anger. He held the tell-tale notice of February twenty-second in his horny paw. Deming was this time not asked to sit down.
"Who's this George?" was demanded.
"Why, that's our great George," confirmed Jim, sharing with jaunty confidence this bit of universal knowledge.
"George—George—the king of England," was the gratifying conclusion.
"And what does this mean?"
"That's Senate and the Roman People. That's just a joke."
"Senate—Senate! Official."
Several of the glowering army folk stood about. They took on menacing airs of importance, following the lead of their chief. An international intrigue, involving a foreign king and senate, was being rapidly unraveled. Deming was so suddenly and summarily dismissed again that he forgot to tell them proudly he was a free American citizen—with a hundred million people behind them.
He was becoming worried and consulted the experience of Miles Anderson whom he had, of course, met through Kirtley.
"In the toils of the German high police!" chuckled Anderson. "That is certainly funny."
"But what am I to do to get rid of them?" inquired Jim anxiously. "It seems I have no privacy. And I don't want to be going to the Platz all the time. Hadn't I better turn it over to our Consulate?"
"Heavens, no. American consuls won't doanything for you. They are considerably Germanic anyhow—work in with the local authorities. It's our easy-going American way. If you want anything done, go to the British or Japanese. Then you will get action. Our official attitude seems to be that an American ought not to be away from America. If he is away, he must look out for himself—has few rights abroad. The Germans respect the English and Japs for they mean business and their consular service is not to be trifled with."
"I don't want to go to foreigners—get this thing all advertised about—go to all that trouble."
"Then tell the Germans to go to hell. That's the only way to get on with Germans. They are used to being sworn at. They will quit you then. If you don't, they will keep you trotting to Headquarters for six months. If you try to be nice, try to placate them, you'll simply get into hotter water. They don't understand such things. They think they are uncovering a vast conspiracy. Cinderella Cotillion Coterie! Gad, of all the farcical happenings I have come across even in Germany!"
Deming was braced up by this advice, andif anything more came of the incident he determined to see it through with some of Anderson's good American bluff and independence.
The following morning he was plashing about in his bath tub when the door was bluntly opened and then partly closed. He faced around in amazement at the audacity of anyone boldly intruding into a bath room—the only place left in Germany for the self-respecting Naked Cult. His eyes fell upon another uniformed emissary from the Police. This one was very obsequious and bowed and scraped his excuses for the unseemly interruption.
"Excuse me, mein Herr, but I heard water splashing and I thought you were at breakfast."
Jim had adopted the fashion of talking derogatorily in English to Germans who, not understanding, usually agreed with his sentiments. This always amused him and satisfied his injured feelings.
"That's the way with you Germans. When you hear a noise, you think someone is eating."
"Ja wohl, ja wohl, mein Herr," assentedthe incomer with crude agreeableness, all the while grinning in shamefacedness. And floating in the water Jim received another order, from the retreating and apologizing minion of the law, to stand at attention at Headquarters. He was unfamiliar with courts of any sort and did not know he should ask for an interpreter. That the officials had not as yet used one showed apparently an attempt to let the accused, thus handicapped, stumble into an incriminating confession.
THEscene was now transferred to a third chamber which looked somewhat like an august tribunal of state. It was an imposing room divided by a long high rostrum upon which sat a terrible looking individual of the utmost lordliness. The attendants were numerous, and if Deming had ever heard of the trial of Warren Hastings he would have thought this appeared an occasion of almost equal importance and gravity. When he arrived for his ordeal before the bench, he seemed a rather small and defenseless figure.
For he was now to be subjected to a sort of "third degree," with a court interpreter at hand. Every word that might be significant in his bedeviling invitation of February twenty-second was gone over with the minatory harshness of medieval inquisitors.
"February twenty-second. Why is that day?"
Deming explained through his intermediary. His interrogators persisted in the idea that it was a pregnant date in English history and had some sinister meaning like Guy Fawkes day. The pages of British annals had evidently been scanned to find the hidden clew.
"'No flowers or singing of hymns.' What is all this?"
"Just a joke, tell him, just a little innocent fun," appealed Jim to his translator.
"You signed yourself as Secretary. That contravenes the law. You had no authority to assume an official position without conferring."
Then there was the mighty Senate and the Roman People again on the mystic communication with its cryptic letters as full of mystery as runes to these Germans. It was, of course, the language of a code.
"Tell him that there is no such thing in the world as the Roman Senate and People," explained Deming with nervous despair. "That was just fooling. Nothing political—nothingpolitical!" he exclaimed. Everything became less convincing and therefore visibly more satisfactory, and looks and voices grew savage in proportion.
There was also the occult CCC.
"Who is Cinderella? Is he in Dresden with you? Where is he to be found?" The word was indicated by a big thumb. Poor Jim, whose specific information was as limited about Cinderella as about most subjects, entered nevertheless on a long explanation not only concerning her but concerning the playful innocence of the George Washington meeting.
"Tell him it was a harmless little social affair that a few of us fellows and girls got up. We will never do it again. I did not know it would be any offense. Tell him I was only doing what I would do in my own country. There we can get together and dance a little any time without disturbing the nation." He wanted to add that the United States was not like police-ridden Germany where it almost seemed that a chap couldn't tie his shoe without permission from the Kaiser. Prudence refrained him.
"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on the bench, gravely illuminated. An assistant suggested thatsecmight, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.
"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a hoarse, triumphant tone.
"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.
"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."
"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was especially French. With us it's just dancing language—everybody uses it. Tell him"—Jim added encouragingly—"tell him I never knew a Frenchman in my life."
"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."
"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.
On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" It expressed his disgusted confirmation of Mr. Anderson's assertion—"What egregious asses such Germans can be!"—and also hisownalarm over his situation. When would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost money to escape from this scrape, and how would his governor and mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.
But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief held up a little battered sheet.
"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"
"Yes, I have, sir," returned Jim, wondering at this strange turn, but fully sure of himself on this ground.
"Untruth. Why did you not pay for three candles left in your room at Karlsruhe? Here is the unreceipted slip."
"Because I did not use them. I did not want them. I left them on the mantel."
"And here is a balance due on your laundrybill at Hamburg—twelve cents—unpaid. How do you explain that?" A torn and dirty washing schedule was handed down to him to refresh his memory.
"I didn't know I owed any balance," argued Jim to his spokesman. "Tell him it was not presented to me. Tell him I will be only too glad to pay anything I owe. I always pay what I owe." The examiner gingerly took up a crumpled napkin, brown from an overturneddemi-tasse.
"August sixteenth, you spilled coffee on your napkin at lunch—half-past twelve. And you went away from the Hotel Bellevue—Bavaria—without making it good. What have you to say to that?" The sorry cloth was held up contemptuously for Jim's inspection and for the edification of the duly pained official audience, most of whom, however, doubtless made no use of such an article in their daily lives.
"I never heard anything about it!" cried Deming. "In my country such things are thrown in. Nothing said about them. But tell him I'll pay it—I'll pay anything—everything. How much is it?"
"Twenty-five cents, the bill claims."
"What is the total?" And Jim began digging in his pockets while holding up his head testily. He had never before been accused of hotel-beating. But payment did not yet appear to be in order. He stared at the mass of files and papers before his cross-questioner. He realized that his whole record in Germany lay there. The Imperial Service had traced him like bloodhounds. Due to his frequent irritated displays of proud American independence on his tour, the bill of small grievances, now accumulated, no doubt assumed troublesome proportions when exposed in its formidable length. Three hours had been consumed, accounted for in part by the necessity of an interpreter. As meal time was at hand Deming was commanded to appear the next morning at nine to have his testimony taken at length.
He departed, his buoyant nature rising once more in partial relief. True to his Yankee instincts he now concluded they were only after the money he owed.
"They want to scare me to make me pay up," he said to himself. "They are afraid they won't get it. I'll pay the little two or three dollars and that will end the matter.These blamed Germans with their ten cents and twenty-five cents! What a system of government to be bothering with these idiotic trifles!"
He sought distraction in several games of billiards followed by dinner at his favorite café. When he returned to his room late that night he found that his effects had been ransacked by two detectives. Fully incensed by this high-handed procedure he determined to place his inalienable rights in the hands of a lawyer the first thing after the early morning meeting.
The taking of his testimony was a proceeding held in a small side apartment before an elderly crotchety underling who pretended to understand English and French, but whose thick-wittedness seemed monumental. The slowness and dullness indicated a whole summer's programme of this preposterous horseplay. Everything was being written down in detail in long hand in the form of questions and answers. All Deming's candles, soiled linen, stained napkins and what-not, reported from all directions of the Empire, began to be raked over. There were green, yellow, red, blue telegrams from half the German States.Harassed by this muck and by the leering taunts of the old party, Jim was glad to find, at the noon hour, that the session was postponed to the second day after.
As he was leaving the room, another offensive inquiry about an absurdity caused him suddenly to remember Mr. Anderson's advice. And in one immortal moment in his existence he rose to a sublime height of moral courage.
"Go to hell!" he shot back. And as he saw the clumsy servitor beginning to pen "Answer: Go to h——" in his great book, Jim slipped out.
He briskly hunted a lawyer to whom he related all the circumstances, winding up elatedly with the last remark.
"Did they write that down too?"
"Yes."
The attorney was at first convulsed, familiar with Teuton naïveté. Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of itshighly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble, the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country. He could leave that night and in not many hours would be in Russia and beyond German control.
And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of farewell from St. Petersburg.
"Here you have German bureaucracy in its full flower and odor," remarked Anderson as he recounted the affair to Kirtley. "It flourishes to a great extent by exaggerating mole hills into mountains with officious vacuity. It is so large that there is not enough serious work for it. So something often must be found to do. It is a civil army radiating the glory of the Kaiser. The more extensive it is, the more entrenched he is. It is official dry rot which is part of the price the people pay for having themselves governed. It is national graft. But while our American forms of graft at least stimulate individual cleverness among our compatriots, this Germanform tends to reduce its recipients to the level of donkeys, as seen in the Deming case."
Gard little suspected that he was to drift into a somewhat similar misadventure, but of an advanced type.
THEsudden drop in the life in Villa Elsa occasioned by meteoric Jim Deming's disappearance, was terrific. Frau Bucher gasped, caught her breath and sank voluminously beneath the waters of social oblivion whence she had so grandly emerged. When she finally came up to her plain surface of existence she demanded, Where are now the theater parties, and drives in the Grosse Garten behind the King? The family had almost begun to wonder how they had got on before. She wailed:
"The good Herr Deming, the marvelous Herr Deming! How could he have abruptly left us? Something mightily strange must have forced him to go. He will surely return. How could he treat Elsa so? Here we are with our hopes, our plans and our new underwear. It is terrible."
For several days the house resounded with perturbation. This gradually decreased as the readjustment to the former flat conditions took place. The transition was not completed until the information arrived that Herr Deming was never coming back. The final stroke. It was indeed pitiable, tragic, amusing. And all because the American custom of flirtation was unknown to these matter-of-fact Germans, so deadly in earnest about everything.
But, Teuton-like, the brave ship Villa Elsa soon righted itself, being used to blows. It had at least entertained and been entertained by one of the Golden Youths of Good Fortune whose legends gild the expectations of every race. And it was a superior satisfaction to realize that this had not happened elsewhere in Loschwitz.
There were left behind no lingering animosities, no painful grievings. Feelings were too stout, sensibilities too tough, to admit of acknowledging rancors or sickly complaints. The daughter's marriageable future was apparently faced again with courageous determination. As she could not be a luxurious American queen, she must be a German housewife who ranked, to say the least, highenoughin the eyes of Gott. But what German's wife? Oddly enough Frau Bucher, despite all her bluntness, never let a hint out of the bag of her franknesses before Kirtley.
After Jim Deming's second riotous invasion of Villa Elsa, when there had been confirmed the abject and tumultuous surrender of the two ladies, mind, body and soul, to mere money, prostrate at the feet of an American "pig," Gard experienced a numbness of heart. True, the daughter was tied to the apron strings of her mother. But then Jim could only fling his pocketbook in her face. He had done it and she, sheep-like, had obviously accepted the situation without a question, a murmur.
How could he, as an American, gage such a blank lack of character, individuality? How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from other peoples. The highest ideal of German character is expressed by works. The highestideal of "Christian" character is expressed by self.
Spring was now at hand. The sunlit air invited to the out-door life. The windows and doors of Villa Elsa, which was stale and stuffy from the closed-up winter, stood open and the inmates came out of their hibernation, shook themselves and welcomed the warmth and lack-luster brightness. The lindens and plane trees and shrubberies began to hug the place under their cosy leafage. Herr Bucher's rose garden was prepared to grow merry with colors. The companionable garden corner for afternoon tea and beer became a nook of liveliness. The oncoming summer sent forth generally its exulting thrills.
This fine surging-in of sunny, revivifying Nature took at first such a strong and glad hold on Gard that his private emotions, which Elsa had so promptly sharpened and whose edge had become dulled, seemed to lay themselves pleasantly aside for the moment. Whether they were to become whetted again into keen interest remained to be seen, for the awakening green and white noon-tide of actual existence was absorbing.
Apparently she was not greatly affected byDeming's departure. She betook herself to her lessons and duties with well-drilled diligence. The years were cut out for her. She had only to follow the pattern. How much more fortunate it would be, Gard had often felt, if she were detached from her semi-civilized household! Her own attractions would then be freed from the surrounding thorns, prickly hedges, that bruised and tore and dismayed one. An American chap could marry her—but oh, her family!
It was not long, however, before she missed meals. She had begun again being mysteriously mute at times in her room, over the Heine poems. Gard had almost forgotten them.
There were no promenades this early season in the meadow, with the poet. No duos were played. Winter, for that matter, was a more favorable time for them, as it was also for the family concerts.
Fräulein observed a meaningless familiarity with Kirtley as if he were an old member of the home circle. He wondered again if Rudolph had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. Sheserved him unwillingly and grabbed his occasionalTrinkgeldswith scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer unjustified Satanism?
The spring weather somewhat curtailed, mollified, all the frank irascibility and wrangling that went on in the house, and it was under the lukewarm spell of this German virgin summer-time that the routine took on its most agreeable aspects, though accompanied with the usual Teuton domestic din. It was, in fact, very enjoyable, contrasted with what the cold months had permitted.
In the winter a pleasant feature had been the theater or opera nights. Darkness then came at four. Dinner would be served at five in order to reach the amusement place at half past six or seven. By eleven the family were back in Loschwitz, sitting down, starved, to a bouncing supper where frequently Kirtley regaled himself with the toothsome Pumpernickel. Over the hot dishes the feverish points of the entertainment were discussed, exclaimed about, while the party cooled off and solaced themselves with Schultheiss. These were rousing and satisfying little happenings.
Free public lectures had also been a source of enjoyment to the Buchers during the long frigid fortnights. Of the five senses, Gard reflected, hearing is the only good one the Germans possess. They hear, absorb through hearing, to better advantage than other races. They close their eyes and drink in seriously. Naturally enough comes about the universality of their music and lectures.
Of these public dissertations a course on the Union between Greek Philosophy and Greek Poetry was especially raved over in Villa Elsa. Gard attended one of these evenings, inspired by the instructional ardors of Frau and Fräulein and Ernst. The example of little Ernst, avid of such intellectual pleasures at his tender age, ever impressed Gard anew. He thought of American lads in comparison.
The German professor, as is well known, occupies a much more potent and exalted position in Germany than the American professor in America. He is considered a reliable fount of wisdom. He speaks with sure authority. He is an oracle, permanent and sounding afar.
On this occasion, precisely at eight o'clock, in a majestic university hall, Kirtley saw this particular grand and popular orator ascendthe pulpit. He was in full dress—white waistcoat, white tie, white kids. He was large, shapely, commanding. The women were "at his feet." He stood there solemnly as the clock was striking, and slowly removed his gloves and inserted them under his coat tail. And for exactly an hour there was a remarkable flow of formidable, finished periods, without a note, without a hesitation. Gard really felt there would never be anything else to say about Beauty, so profound, so complete, so final, seemed this survey of the topic.
At the close the audience flocked to the speaker as if to an Olympian victor. Frau Bucher was ecstatic, covering him with her compliments while insisting on waiting for a propitious moment to introduce Herr Kirtley. But as Gard remained there at the lecturer's elbow, he met with another disillusion about German professors. This locally famous man, so correctly dressed to outward view, wore no shirt collar under his beard. His neck and ears showed no signs of recent ablutions and were bushy with unkempt hairs. And he exhaled a rank odor compounded of perspiration and dirt.
Gard almost choked, being crowded intoclose contact. Could he ever get fully accustomed to German smells? It was most unpleasant, disenchanting. He could not, it appeared, find himself attracted to Teuton university expounders—those gods of wisdom who had repulsed him.
Whether it was his unfortunate luck or not, he was not able to summon a desire to go again. He had not forgotten his other experience. It was a part of that something fundamentally, monumentally lacking in the German race—something shoddy, deceptive, which he had met with at so many turns.
INthe vernal season the lectures and theaters were dropped for neighborhood excursions of which the Buchers, like all German families, were extremely fond. A rendezvous would be made for dinner, for instance, at some attractive spot up the Elbe. It would be a walking trip from Loschwitz along the winding banks or up on a higher path stretching from one smooth, low-lying hilltop to another. Everywhere the invigorating odor of pine lay in the air. The company assembled by twos or singly at their convenience during the late afternoon. Generally the Herr would be last. And when he was spied approaching, with a cock's feather in his hat and supporting himself authoritatively on his big stick, a chorus of acclaim greeted him, for craving appetites were now to be satisfied.
The household would pass the evening diningal frescoand enjoying the landscape studded with historic and other enduring memories. Near by was Hosterwitz, where Weber composed "Oberon" and "Der Freischütz." Often mists from the Elbe rose mystically to engarland the crenelated castles here and there on the heights. A drowsy river boat in that long agreeable northern twilight would finally gather up the family at the dock and drop them off at home.
Sundays were the favorite time for these little outings. Lessons, classes, tasks, were then lightened. Gard had quickly become aware in Germany that the Sabbath is considerably a day of work as well as pleasure. The usual impression in America that the Germans are religious, not to speak of being moral, was dispelled. This had been a fragment of his erroneous idea that they are active Protestants in the sense that carries any Calvinistic or ethical meaning.
Neither the Buchers, nor any of the families whom Kirtley met through them, went to church. The Protestant churches were, in fact, gloomy, tasteless and almost empty. Their services appeared cheerless and forbidding. Tremendous fear was their keynote. It seemed far more agreeable to a German to partake of the national sacrament out in a beer garden.
His attitude seemed to be that his race were born so constitutionally and thoroughly in line with Divineness that they did not need todoanything about it. The religious element, as a shaper of conduct and thought, was accordingly not required. As for any restraining power, the Government furnished all of this that was necessary.
At any rate the rulers looked after religion. They observed all-sufficiently its rites. They stood next to Deity and represented and protected the people. Kirtley remarked that when the ordinary German began talking of God, which was rare, he was soon talking of the Emperor. Both deities were ever solicitous for him, working tirelessly in his behalf. The Kaiser was properly the national busybody, the head schoolmaster, who attended to everybody and everything and drove all constantly forward toward a unified and splendid destiny.
Thus arose the firm belief of the Germans in their natural righteousness—the righteousness of how they act, what they possess. Gard saw there existed among them little virtue in the way of religion to offer the youth of other lands. To send an American son or daughter to Deutschland for such influence and benefit was but another example of the prevailing misconception of real Teutonism.
Many an evening the family dined at the famous Schiller Garden which stretched along the shore, just across the river. Knitting and sewing and books were taken along, a large table was secured, and there the members ate and refreshed themselves with liquids in leisurely fashion from six o'clock until bed time. There would be plenty of talking and smoking and plying of needles as the moonlight or river lights danced forth to guide the active river traffic and also the large inflowings and outflowings of restaurant guests. And all to the bracing music of a capital orchestra reeling off jubilant marches and waltzes.
These were good times when the German was to be observed under the most favorable colors. After Tekla's little tragedy snatched her away from Villa Elsa, as will soon be seen, this dining out became the regular event of the day.
On one of these occasions in the Schiller Garden the conversation fell once more on America. The subject had not been touched since the eruption over Yankee "pigs". It had lain dormant under the mesmeric effect of Jim Deming's appearance.
Gard gathered the following for his notebook. The Buchers maintained that, even if the Hohenzollerns were not wanted, they were necessary to hold Germany together. Otherwise she would split up into many impotent states and be at the mercy of the solidary races adjoining her. But who could not want the Hohenzollerns? They had made of Germany—really a small, poor country—a mighty power. Look at huge America, by contrast! She was weak, disorganized, aimless. She was the proverbial giant with few bones. The western half of the United States was still practically undeveloped, and yet it abounded in natural wealth.
Then there was the Monroe Doctrine. It was a baseless fiat for which there was no legal or moral justification—as arrogant a presumption as could be claimed of any edict of a Kaiser. The Buchers asserted that the Doctrine was a crime against humanity. It hadkept, for a hundred years, South America and Central America indifferently civilized, miserably governed, their thin populations uneducated, thriftless, superstitious, bigoted. Said the Herr:
"If our Germany had had full access to that half hemisphere it would be in a full blaze of progress. It would be affording prosperous homes to untold millions of Europeans now packed together like sardines. The mines, forests, rich soils, grazing lands, would have long ago been completely opened up, tilled, occupied, for the benefit of man who is still, in the main, inadequately fed and clothed. We Germans can, admittedly, manufacture cheaper and better goods than anyone. We ought to be free in our way and by our own methods to supply those Americas with the necessities and comforts of civilization and make them rich and happy.
"Their mongrel races are poverty stricken, disease stricken, and often fighting among themselves. The United States does little for them. Nor will she let anyone else. She plays the dog in the manger to the detriment of the world. And this is because she is vain, timid and without plan. Is that logical, wise andserving mankind for the best? Were conditions reversed, would she herself favor such a backward, lagging programme?"
Kirtley admitted to himself that this was a very good and valid point of view for Germans. He recognized its general source, for the Buchers, in the Dresden newspapers. But he did not enter into argument. He had satisfied himself that argument with Teutons, who do not have open minds, who are obsessed by fixed ideas bored into them, can only end in unpleasantness—a row. He had come to Germany to learn. It would be defeating this purpose to air what notions he might have.
In Villa Elsa itself a good deal of the feasting in April and May was carried on in the garden where flowers and dogs completed the picture, together with much open-air singing accompanied by the piano up in the salon. Were it not for the musical cult, it would have been difficult, Gard had concluded, to live in this household. As Anderson said, music had in a degree tamed the German "beast" of the north and made it possible to get on with him at all. Music rather than woman, religion, orthe ideal of social intercourse, had partly softened him.
The Bucher sons liked to come to table outdoors with spurs or side arms, and the Herr's favorite hunting equipment was often in evidence, recalling to him days of valiant sport. With their stiff and long strides they affected to be larger, greater, than other males. Supermen in the form of Goliaths! The women loved the sight of such warlike paraphernalia. Such things added zest to the joyous toast—Der Tag! But none of these heroes had yet killed anyone or anything, so far as Kirtley discovered.
In warm weather Villa Elsa did not relax in the matter of six daily repasts. Breakfast at half-past seven. Bread, slices of cold meat and something in addition, at eleven. Luncheon at one, hearty enough for a dinner. At half-past fourhellesbeer and tea withButterbrods. Dinner at seven. And on going to bed a fortifying supper of pigs' feet, sausage, cheese and other man-like delicacies, flooded with potations.
Gard had, after the months, adjusted himself somewhat to these conditions. He had become, hethought, more used to the Germanway of living. To get the best out of it, he realized that one must coarsen instead of refine the senses and aptitudes. Instincts should be strengthened, roughened, rather than checked or made more esthetic. The German puts a heavy hand on things. He takes big bites at existence. Thunderous might envelops and clouds his idea of perfection.
ONEmorning early in June when Kirtley, who had been away the afternoon and evening before, came down to breakfast, he found the household upset. Something bad had happened. Tekla was gone. Rudi was not to be seen. Frau had prepared a partial meal and Elsa was making ready to sweep and dust and tidy up the rooms.
The parents were in a rage. They made no bones about it. Frau blurted out with German unreservedness:
"I packed Tekla off—the animal. She had no consideration for me. What do you think, Herr Kirtley? She is going to be a mother. And by Rudi. Wouldn't you have thought he would have more sense than this—right here at home—break up my service? He let her get him into the mess. I have no doubtit was her doings—my poor Rudi. We have sent him away for a couple of days. I told Tekla to go—be off. And she was out on the street—likethat—with her bundle of belongings under her arm. And here I am with no servant. Ach Gott! they are all cattle, of course. One has to put up with them."
Herr was in a growling, ferocious state. He blamed Tekla. He blamed his Frau for not knowing what was going on. It was the woman's fault. Everything always was. His incomplete breakfast was late.
"Is there nothing left to eat in the house?" he cried out. He took on a famished and abused air, although he had had his usual six meals the day before. "Give me at least some cheese and bread!"
In this manner Tekla was roundly denounced for interrupting the course of family comfort. That she had mortally sinned awakened no attention, aroused no concern. There was no sympathy expressed for her in her condition, no responsibility felt for her in her downfall or anxiety about her future. Whether she would, from this misstep, have to take to the streets for a living occurred to no one but Kirtley.
Germans are little wrought up about such questions. There is no shuddering as from an admitted mortal sin. Natural impulses and facts are natural impulses and facts. Why should one be squeamish about them or have soul burnings? In general, carnal desires meet with no great fastidiousness in the German domestic circle. They are rather regarded as honest and healthy like desires for food and drink. The Teuton wife is ashamed of barrenness and considers it proper for women to be fully sexed in feeling. Sexuality is not something to be shrunk from, discouraged or denied, but is a candid, copious law of Nature to be recognized.
When Rudi returned shortly from Leipsic, where it had been deemed best for him to retire for the moment, he appeared as conceited and noisy as if nothing had happened. He was not cowed or penitent. His parents, who had got Villa Elsa in running order and were forgetting thecontretemps, almost beamed upon him. He was now a full-fledged male. Any lingering uncertainties as to his completed manhood had been effectually removed. His affair was viewed from the standpoint of potent strength, not lapse from virtue. Youngmen had their wild oats to sow. His mistake had been to disturb his own household. Had it been another household, little heed would have been given.
In the Bucher minds the satisfying net result seemed to be that anothersoldier(it was to be hoped) was to be born for the army, for the Kaiser. Soldiers had to be. Tekla was to fulfill her highest mission as a German servant girl. She was to become a just and constituent part of the swelling Empire.
Frau's ideas and information on the subject provided Gard's journal with some more condensed material. They were talking out by the garden table.
"What becomes of the German servant girl under such conditions?" he inquired.
"Oh, she can get into another family and go on as before."
"And the baby? How does she manage with that?"
"She puts it out among poor farm people and pays a little for its keep. As the mother usually works about in different localities—sometimes being taken far away by her employers—the farmer often adopts the baby as it grows up. He can always use more help.If it's a girl, she is good for the farm as well as the house. If it's a boy, he becomes a soldier. A boy of this kind makes the best soldier because he has no parental and no home attachments. He only knows the barracks and has the officers to obey. He does not learn who his father is, and the mother becomes practically a stranger to him as she moves about in the city or country. He is ready to serve in the colonies or go anywhere or do anything, having no personal ties to hold him."
"Does not your large army badly demoralize these social conditions?"
"You know, we housewives don't like it much when a new regiment moves into the vicinity. It makes mothers among our domestics and we have to change about. Of course, you see, we have more women than men in Germany and we must have children growing up for the barracks and the cheap labor market. There seems to be no other way, but it is often a great nuisance for us housekeepers. Yet there is this to say: The girls rarely have more than one child by the same man. For another regiment comes along and there are new relations. The army is necessarily afloating population and not very responsible for what it does among us civilians because itprotectsus."
Kirtley concluded that this accounted for the large number of detached young men in Germany—in the army and out of it—who appeared to be so entirely footloose, ready for any mission or task in any part of the globe. As the two sat there talking about the question of lovelessness in these relations, Herr Bucher strolled up from his flower beds and joined them in his Tyrolean jacket of the chase and big army boots. Gard said,
"We were speaking of affection, Herr Bucher. Why do the Germans have the ideal of hate when other races are holding up the ideal of love?"
"Because it is good to hate!" exclaimed the host with rugged forcefulness as he squatted in a seat. "To hate is strong, manly. It makes the blood flow. It makes one alert. It is necessary for keeping up the fighting instinct. To love is a feebleness. It enervates. You see all the nations that talk of love as the keynote of life are weak, degenerate. Germany is the most powerful nation in the world because she hates. When you hate, youeat well, sleep well, work well, fight well. It is best for the health. When you love, it is like a sickness and disorganizes and debilitates."
"How do you reconcile that with Christ and His mission of love?" pursued Gard.
"There is nothing to reconcile. We simply do not admit all that. It is not practical. Christ was not practical. He had no family. He made no home. He never even built a house. He did not found a State. He let the Romans run over Him. How can one live in a cold northern climate without a house, a nation and an army to protect him? No, it is not at all practical. Even Christ could not defend Himself. He was crucified without any resistance, any struggle. To hate is to struggle and that is the mainspring of action. So one must prepare himself to struggle successfully. To hate, to cause to be feared, are the proper motives for life. Theyarelife. Fear is a stronger and far more universal human motive than love. Therefore we Germans want to be feared rather than to be loved. So we hate because it engenders fear in others. To love is already half a surrender and ends logically in death. With Christ thereal victory, the real heaven aspired to, was in death, not in life."
The Herr had faithfully read Rudi's contemporary German military philosophers.
Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except under aquasitruce or other provisional conditions. To form a perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton reformation took place.
In the midst of these repulsing discords Gard was surprised, on returning to his room a night or two later, to find by his table a new red and gold copy of Heine's verse inclosing a sprig of forget-me-not. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a youthful, copybook hand: