Immer heller brennt die Licht,Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht.Offered to her meadow pupilBy his meadow teacher.(Ever brighter burns the lightOf my sweet forget-me-not.)
Immer heller brennt die Licht,Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht.
Offered to her meadow pupilBy his meadow teacher.
(Ever brighter burns the lightOf my sweet forget-me-not.)
The Germans are not original in love-making. Elsa had read of such things being done. But it was an admission or advance from her as unexpected as it was belated. Gard tossed about awhile on his bed, thinking of it. As he had often acknowledged to himself, he had been interested in her more than any girl he had yet known.
In the morning, when things were clearer in his consciousness, he assumed that her enterprising, calculating mother had inspired the gift. For it seemed to beaproposof nothing in particular at this unpropitious time, although he had made Elsa little presents during the fall and early winter. It was evident that the family, after the arrival of the mirific Jim Deming, had grown somewhat accustomed to Americans and had at length struck a sentimental attitude.
ADAYor two afterward, another little tragedy visited Villa Elsa, following on the heels of the unfortunate departure of Tekla. Ernst came home at lunch time with his head swollen in reds and purples and hardly able to walk. At his morning drill his sergeant had knocked him down by a blow in the face and then kicked him in the knee. The little philosopher was a good deal of a dreamer and had failed in strict and prompt attention. To strike down and boot the rank and file are, of course, a normal part of Prussian army discipline.
Kirtley was incensed, horrified. But to his amazement the family sided with the officer. Although Ernst stood in grave danger of being crippled for life, they were ugly in their censures of him. They said it was a good thing to bring him down from the clouds.
The poor little fellow was a pitiable object for some time. He not only suffered painfully from his bruises but had to meet the irate looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the feet on the earth.
Gard thought how differently an American father and mother would act. Their sons belonged to them and they would resent any outside interference that smacked of cruelty. In Germany, the boys, as already observed, belonged essentially to the Government. The vicious treatment of German children in the home, at school, in the army, accounts for the unique Teuton institution of child-suicide. The number of these boys and girls who, because of their hardships, destroy themselves in despair, is shockingly great. The statistics in other races offer little in comparison.
To break down the will by abasing youth before its comrades and elders, to lay its self-respect low, to beat dignified individuality into callous insensibility, manufactured a docile, automatic unit for the German mechanism. The peculiar strength of Deutschland lay in this early control and training of itsyoung. And as the young surrendered their unimportant consciousness as individuals, they gained an important consciousness as factors in the State. For this reason, as they learned to be almost servile among their own folk, they became domineering among foreigners.
Villa Elsa now was true to the adage that misfortunes do not come or loom singly. One forenoon, about the middle of June, Kirtley was sitting in his attic, turning over in his mind the fact that his year in Germany would soon be up, and endeavoring to explain why he felt depressed. The recent events, it was true, had created a very unpleasant condition of mind, but his body itself also seemed to share in the inharmony. A dullness, a heaviness, had begun to weigh upon his physique and yet here were summer, Nature, the green earth, rejoicing all about him. It was odd. What was the full explanation?
As he sat there thinking somewhat dolefully about himself and forgetting his opened books, a loud knock was heard at his door. It was Frau Bucher with her knitting. She had never honored him with a call in his room. Something must be the matter.
At his invitation she came in and sank into a chair. Her face and hair were mussed. She was laboring under a great strain. The sons with their ill-luck had troubled her. The recent mishaps had evidently alarmed her, upset her, so that it was now the daughter filling the mother's anxious hours.
"Your daughter—Fräulein Elsa!" Gard exclaimed in astonishment.
"Yes, my poor daughter. Oh, good Herr Kirtley, you have always been so kind. I have treated you this winter like a son—just like my own sons."
"You have been very good to me, Frau Bucher," interpolated Kirtley, hastening to offer any consolation, although he could not imagine what distress had brought her to him.
"Well, my daughter—you know it has always been the intention that she marry Friedrich—ever since they were almost children. But, mein Gott, the poor Friedrich does not arrive at anything. We love him. All our friends love him—admire him. But he can get no fixed position. We wait, he waits, Elsa waits. Always hopes and more hopes and nothing comes. And he is so disappointed. No Kapellmeistership. Onlysmall engagements which do not pay much and soon end. He has no money and what little we have to give with Elsa will not answer until he is permanently established.
"You see Friedrich is a courageous fellow and he is apt to speak his mind. You remember how he mimicked the military. My husband and I think he makes enemies by his impulsive temper. You know what musicians are. They talk right out. We think his enemies put difficulties in his way. And so nothing is settled. We keep waiting and here we are. Elsa wants to marry. She wants children!" exploded the artless Frau.
The abruptness of this confession in the matter-of-fact German way almost overcame Gard with embarrassment. He recovered himself at length to ask:
"Does she love him?"
"Ach Himmel! does she love him? Haven't you seen her so dumb at times? But nothing comes to pass—and when will there be anything? She gets her grumpy spells over these postponements—always postponements. You know young people are impatient. They don't understand such things. She wants to marry. Every young girl wants to marry andhave children. I may die. My husband may die at any time. And she won't be settled for life."
The mother went off in a vigorous scene of upheaval. The slender and youthful Kirtley felt himself unequal to the task of trying to comfort her bulky person with its commotions.
"But what do you want me to do? Frau Bucher?"
"We all love America, Herr Kirtley!" she burst out. "Elsa loves America. Ever since that splendid Herr Deming came, we love America. And we feel we can trustyou. Young men ought to marry early. Elsa wants a decent husband and a decent little home. That is not much to ask. Of course we would hate to have her go so far away. But you have always been so kind to her. You have shown such interest in her. And what a good girl Elsa is! We have brought her up so carefully—and to be a good wife. She can cook and sew and keep house. She can play and paint, and also sing a little. She is strong, never sick, and can work—work. All you Americans have money. We Germans are poor. We can't give her much for a dowry.Excuse me, Herr Kirtley, but you see I came naturally to you. Who else is there? We have made a son of you this winter." Then Frau Bucher almost shrieked out:
"And you can stay herealways, if you prefer that!"
Full of her brave endeavor the mother bolted through the door without any ceremony of leave-taking.
Gard could not collect his tumultuous thoughts there in the room. At last the whole secret was out. Had she not foresightedly kept it so long with some such purpose in view?
Fresh air was the only place for him. He grabbed his hat to escape other fateful contingencies that morning, and made for the pine park where it was silent and cool. He walked hastily, with his hat off, along the path where Elsa and he used to stroll while conning together the passionate lyrics of the passionate Heine.
HEwent on and on through the firs and hemlocks, on the right bank of the Elbe, then down toward the city. A multitude of convictions, reflections, impressions, flocked in his brain. After awhile he seemed to send them all scattering by exclaiming, "I'll be damned!"
They turbulently regathered. There was the sensual ape Von Tielitz—they would marry her to him. She could love him, polluted and swinish in the low sinks of womankind. There was the flatulent Jim Deming with his money—she could quickly marry him. And at last the ideals Gard had nourished about her had finally tumbled to the ground that day in her mother's crude offer of bargain and sale.
These Germans! They were outside the pale. They were the midway people between barbaric Asia and the civilized West. America, millions, pigs, morals, love, brutality, erudition, proficiency, obscenity—the Teuton race mixed them all up hopelessly, without rime or reason.
Gard walked and walked without realizing he was becoming tired. As he neared the city he burst out again with, "I'll be damned!" It was all the résumé he could arrive at. He found himself finally hungry and made his way to Fritzi's little inn. He felt almost beaten out. Was he really well?
The middle of the afternoon had come. There she was fresh, free, like a hardy wild flower. She trotted back and forth, curtseying, chattering, with her merry heels clicking on the tiling. The hot sausages andLebkuchenand a stein were hastened in, and she switched her short skirts down cosily on a bench in front of him to knit and look out after his needs. He had encouraged such opportunities for the practice of conversation.
"I've been looking for you to come in," she lisped.
"Why?"
"I wanted to ask you to buy a ticket for our Waitress Dance, and I did not knowat all where you lived." It was a long sentence for her and she giggled.
"Number 5, Wiesenstrasse, Loschwitz."
"Gott im Himmel! That's way off."
"Whenisyour dance?"
"It's to-night. And it's only twelve marks." She fumbled out a ticket from beneath her white apron with a maid's agitation.
"I'll take it," said Gard.
"But you have to promise to go. They want every ticket holder to go."
"Are you going?"
"Of course I'm going. It's all us waitresses. And it's only once a year. The waiters have theirs twice a year."
"And are you going to dance?"
"Of course I'm going to dance. I always dance." She perked up her head with her young red mouth open in almost childish puzzlement, as much as to say, "Why, what are balls for?"
Gard looked down on his fattening supply of smoking sausages and honey cakes. A servants' ball might be just the thing to cure his disgust with Loschwitz—with himself—with everything. He had heard Friedrich, Messer and Jim Deming exclaim enthusiastically about these popular fêtes. They should not, it appeared, be missed if one wanted to see the real German nature let loose.
"Well, if you're going to dance, I'll go," he promised.
"You bet your life I'm going to dance!" Fritzi cried out in the Saxon dialect's equivalent as she sprang up, and wheeled off to wait on a new visitor. When she had served him she sidled back to Gard's table with a doubting, half-disappointed air.
"You're fooling me." She stuck her tongue out on her upper lip in peasant bashfulness.
"No, I'll be there as sure as I'm now paying for the ticket." He filled her fat hand with the coins which it could hardly hold. She went away happy.
The ball did not begin until ten, to give the young ladies time to finish their dining-room duties and dress. Kirtley went to a café and watched the billiards until after dark, then slipped out to Villa Elsa, jumped into his evening clothes, and slipped away again. He had seen the royalty dance. Now he would see the common people. This bustling about was cheering. He was glad to go.
The ball room was big, barn-like, with green branches and cheap flowers strung about. Aprons, napkins, table cloths, bills of fare, and other insignia of the waitress profession filled in the local color of the decorations on the walls. There was not one of the everlastingVerbotensto be seen. Alcoves containing tables and chairs ranged around.
The entertainment was in full fling when Gard arrived. As the night was warm the doors and windows were open wide, and fully as many people seemed outside as inside. The throng included a number of students. The dancing was everywhere—on the grass, in the doorways, in the dressing rooms, on the stage by the orchestra. How free and easy compared with the Court affair!
Kirtley took refuge in an alcove. He fancied he would before long spy Fritzi. She would be the only person he knew. But she discovered him first. She tripped up to him with a green cavalier redolent of salad oil and beer. She was very proud to be able to claim Herr Kirtley for one of her "sales." Foreigners are always distinguished. The music struck up again and off she was whisked without saying Aufwiedersehen.
She next came up hanging on to the arms of two dancers. More introductions. All were getting sweaty and thirsty. Gard invited them to sit and he provided Schultheiss.
Fritzi soon settled upon this spot as headquarters, twirling off into the figures and returning with different companions. She brought a girl whom she wanted specially to meet the Herr. The girls dived into the alcove, then out, back again, and hung about flustered, by turns bold or backward. They did not know whether it was proper to see that he danced. He was, of course, high above their class, but if he didn't wish to dance, why had he come? Fritzi wanted to be polite but the situation was above her etiquette. He had been so kind as to buy a ticket, and how could he have a good time without joining in the festivities? The girls nudged each other, balked and snickered.
Gard saw Fritzi's awkward restraint and set her at rest by saying:
"I can't dance the German way."
"The German way?" she echoed bluntly. "Why, I thought everybody in the world danced alike."
"We don't whirl round and round as you do," Gard explained.
"Well, I'll swear!" she clucked incredulously, her tongue in her cheek as if saying, "What sort of dancing can that be!"
The dust and streams of perspiration began to affect everyone, but the music and revolving exertions grew more rapid and vigorous as the hours advanced. Beetles and bugs sailed through the air along with the familiar German odors that greeted Kirtley's nostrils. Everyone became freer. Enjoyment ran higher. Men shed their coats and women made themselves equally comfortable. It was beer, beer, beer.
When Fritzi had seen that her Herr was not to take part, she began to behave toward him with a more bluff unconventionality. She made him acquainted with all her partners and girl friends. She confided to him the little jingling trinkets she wore. Her face ablaze, her hair tousled, her feet keeping on the floor with difficulty, she looked to Gard like a flaming mænad. She had come in cheap satin, and also in silk hose which she particularly doted on. But like all thrifty German maids, after two or three dances she divested herselfof these and put on stouter stuffs which she had brought along and which could stand the wear and tear. The possession of those finer things had first to be shown to gratify vanity. Then recourse was had to a practical basis for physical pleasure.
Gard mused over the seething picture before him. He knew it had been pointed out that while the Germans are lewd, they are not dissolute. They do not let their duties suffer. Their ample physiques can stand hard strains, and a night of revelry is followed next day by a prompt resumption of tasks. These young folk, tearing about like disheveled satyrs and nymphs, would be at their jobs in the morning.
The Teuton does not waste his patrimony in riotous living or lead a lawless existence. To this extent the influence of the Government, in its way, was felt. While it recognized that the forceful animal spirits of its people must be indulged to keep them contentedly in control, it set its face against waste of time and of belongings in any prolonged habits of dissipation. Thus the strength and material resources, the plodding industry and economy,of the race were conserved as well as energized.
As for the German women, they are not naturally passionate in the ordinary emotional and imaginative acceptation of this word. Their passions are not extended by any radical complications of romance or ideality. In a sense, they keep their heads in any indulgence.
ATmidnight Kirtley saw a remarkable sight. On the stroke of twelve, loud toasts to Der Tag were suddenly lifted high in air as the orchestra broke forth with the Wacht am Rhein. An uproar seized the assembly. "Gott scourge England! Down with France! Deutschland über Alles!" In a twinkling it was a crowd mad for war. Beer mugs were smashed, various objects of apparel were flung far and wide. Improvised orators—students—mounted tables and began crying for vengeance on the world in speeches which, in the hubbub, did not get much beyond preliminary exclamations.
Hatred of Great Britain stood out above it all. How long must the Fatherland be held in check? "Der Kaiser! Hoch der Kaiser!" The popular national frenzy had in this spotripped off any bounds. Burn, sack, violate, kill—Gard heard the intimations—the threats—of all such frightfulness. In the furor he stood up on his table to get a better view of the extraordinary demonstration. It sounded fateful, terrible, like descriptions recited of the French Revolution. He was almost awestruck. At its height he feared personal violence for himself. He had sometimes been taken for a Britisher.
Anderson was right again. The Teutons lusted for war now. What a spectacle! The old, old German hate. This very lowly class of people—waiters and waitresses—had nothing, would be the very first to face severe hardships, and the men would suffer more than any at the front. They would all be mainly the ones to go hungry, be cold, be killed. But here appeared the cannon fodder demanding to be shot down in its craze for Triumphant Germany. It was hoarse for Victory or Destruction. It was drunk with its physical power. These soldiers were angrily impatient to be let loose like hellhounds, from the sullen fastnesses of mountains and swamps behind the Rhine, upon the Christian populations beyond in the great plains of civilization.
When the tempest had passed and its activities were dwindling into the renewed whirlwinds of the dance, Gard resumed his seat, his head beginning to swim a little. At last his doubting eyes were as if unsealed. A Vandal tribe, a great and powerful Vandal tribe, still lived in the world. It was feeding on Conflict—the food of its ancient bellicose gods.
How was it, indeed, that our trained American observers, men who had been educated in Germany and those who had not, never saw anything of this danger that was boiling in the breasts of even the humblest classes of Teutons? Yes, Anderson was correct. The Germans were, after all, frank enough about it. All was spontaneous and bold. Egged on by their military, political, educational, religious masters, the populace could easily, at any time, work themselves up like this into a frantic state about conquest. And yet Americans heard nothing of it. It was as if their channels of information were subsidized under German authority.
At one o'clock supper time came and Gard ordered. There were Fritzi and another girl and two young men—all very profuse in their appreciation of his hospitality. The poppingof a few bottles of cheap champagne sounded in his ears. He was in the swing of the excitement and could not be outdone. His brand was French, of a fine quality. It exhilarated his brain far above the plain, distorted commonplaces of Loschwitz.
After supper the real frolic set in. The true devotees now alone remained. They began doing fancy twists, with legs out far and wide. Vests came off, with collars and ties, and feminine charms became as familiar as an old story that is read too often to have much meaning for the senses. To Gard it all now appeared seemly enough, like an opera peasant ballet whose frank rusticities were excused under the inspiration of the music.
Fritzi's hair floated loosely over her shoulders. It looked to him even brighter than Elsa's. Her snug, many-colored bodice became partly unlaced and she had kicked off her tight slippers under Gard's table. In their heated condition many of the other waitresses were dancing in their unshod feet. He thought it very natural and pleasing when Fritzi rushed up with her heirloom of silk stockings which she had removed early in the evening. They had been her grandmother'swho had worn them at some grand baron's wedding long ago—the sole tradition and distinction connected with Fritzi's lineage. One of her friends had been robbed in the dressing room and she was afraid to trust these precious articles there longer. She made sure that Gard had tucked them in his pocket for safekeeping. As she hurried to rejoin the circles, he saw that she had worn through the bottoms of her dancing hose.
Whenever that feeling of discomfort, which he had been conscious of early that morning, surged for a moment through him, a sip of champagne brought quick relief and gilded the scene and his spirits with its necromancy. He felt dizzy but blissful. He became drowsy.... He had sunk into a dream, glorious then ugly, foolish but haunting.
He dreamed he was an armored knight of the time of Charlemagne. He was astride a steed caparisoned for battle, and was riding southward from the Alps in the blazing sunlight, along a white road amid what he supposed were the gardened plains of Lombardy. By his side, in similar array, rode a lovely blond princess of the North with a wonderful luxuriance of hair—some daughter of theFrankish race of fierce and resplendent Brunnhildas or Fredegondas.
She at last became wearied of her heavy armor, the length of the journey and the burning sun. He assisted in extricating her from her coat of mail, and took her over into his arms asleep, letting her armor ride upright on her charger save for the helmet which he fastened to his pommel. As the horses kept onward he held with delight her lightsome body, with her miraculous tresses entwining him as she slumbered. He held her embraced in tenderness, for had not she—a princess—trusted him and gone away with him alone?
He had not thus ridden with her far, before his eyes, alert in every direction for the treacherous enemies of the land, beheld with gaping fright an immense black serpent, brilliant with scales glistening in the scintillating air, slowly uncoiling out of her headless panoply that was still riding bolt upright by his side. He glared down at her in the certainty that she had turned into a twin serpent at his breast. She lay there still in the seductive form of a woman. But she had turned loathsome to his touch. He hurled her to the ground and thenext moment was flying on foot, afield, in horror from the spot.
And he recalled in his dream how woman and the snake have been allied in legend, religion and history—how they have ever been identified in the minds of men. His beautiful queen had been at one with the serpent in that suit of metal. Or was it only Elsa?—was it only Fritzi?—with their amber hair?
For what seemed a very long time he was fitfully trying to decide—when he slowly made out that brawny Frau Bucher stood over him.
SHEwas in the act of giving him a potion for a raging fever. Once he realized that Herr Bucher sat silently poring over a book by the bed, chucking him back into it when he tossed out. The Bucher children occasionally appeared on errands for his comfort. The family nursed him more diligently than if he had been their own.
Gard came back to his senses rather rapidly. He had found himself in his room. He was in his own bed—that German bed. Summertide was steadily flooding in through the grateful leaves of his linden, and brightening his confining walls. His narrow-gage American digestive apparatus had, it appeared, finally rebelled over the broad German fare. All his eating and drinking during the months had proven disastrous. When he had begun tofeel bad that last day, it only needed a little champagne to bring to a head the inevitable revolt. And so, toward the end of his year, he was physically not far from where he had been on coming to Deutschland for the sake of its inspiring virilities.
He had plenty of time to wonder how he had got back to Loschwitz from the Waitress Dance. He never inquired, never learned. But Fritzi alone knew his address. He had no recollection of anything. He went through his pockets. His valuables were intact. His money was all there as nearly as he could figure out, except a reasonable amount evidently used to pay the supper bill and convey him home. Truly those considerate servants had not acted like amateurs.
He finally remembered about Fritzi's hose. They were gone. At length Frau Bucher said she had forgotten to tell him that a pretty young woman came to reclaim them. He was ashamed enough. To be carried to his room in the odor of champagne and with a girl's silk stockings in his pocket!He—Gard Kirtley! Was this the low estate to which German life had brought him?
But he soon observed that the Bucherscared nothing about all this. Young men, as we have seen, were expected to go on larks. No one spoke of the distressing occurrence. There was no disagreeable testimony that he had made great trouble. No looks of reproach attacked him. His Puritan habits had been, in fact, very curious to the parents. They felt now that he was a youth whom they could understand. He was true to the proper type.
It was a relief for him to know that he had not dropped in respect before any of the household. He believed he had, on the contrary, grown in their estimation, as had Rudi after his "experience." The poor Herr Kirtley was considered a much abused victim of an unfortunate sickness. Once Frau exclaimed:
"Ach Himmel! our sons have such a hard time of it!"
When he began to eat ravenously after his enforced abstinence, hearty foods and heavy drinks were supplied. It is the German fashion at such times to build up the strength quickly with lusty meals. He was started promptly again on the road to gastric ruin.
Often at night a cold sweat would bead over Gard. What would he do about Frau Bucherand Elsa? He had been thrown helpless into their hands. Holy Smoke! Would he become a German in spite of himself? He sometimes wished the Imperial Secret Service might scare him out of the country as had been the case with the lucky Deming.
The Buchers had likely saved his life. He had been brought by them faithfully back to health. How was he going to repay? What excuses could he offer when the time came to face Frau's proposal? How could he possibly make his escape at all agreeably? Was ever a fellow in just such a pickle?
And here was the ever-capable Elsa dutifully bringing his viands and at times reading to him stories from Hoffmann. She was like a real fairy out of a German story book. The new Heine she had given him lay there, but neither suggested opening it. It was not a thing to get well over.
To a sick man, his nurse seems heavenly. And Elsa looked truly golden as she sat there over the Hoffmann, with the sunlight streaming about her head. In Gard's phantasmagoria at night there had often been a blond maiden, dancing and lovely—but mingled at length into some unpleasant circumstance likethat connected with the phantom princess he had ridden with in Italy.
Ernst, still limping from his beating, came in now and then and read out of a ponderous volume on the Relation of German Music to the Reformation. It was full of intricate, plodding, dull detail in the German style, which the lad found of interest. But Gard, despite this kindness, could not make much headway with it. Smoking was, of course, permitted to accompany his man-like return to health, and it was always a genial hour to have Anderson sitting there in the wreaths of nicotine before the summery window, talking, talking.
The correspondent came several times, bringing comic papers. Gard pleased him by saying he was veering round to the journalist's way of thinking on things German. He related the Der Tag incident at the ball. The family life of the Teutons, the life of the plain people—all were substantiating the essential and alarming truth of the old man's beliefs. At last another American in Germany had been found who was experiencing an awakening. The result was a mutual appreciation.
One afternoon they were eating some ofthe big German cherries, and the fragrance of Herr Bucher's rose garden below was engaged in balmy conflict with the odors of cigars.
"Well, what is the solution about the German people?" Gard propounded. "What's to be done with them? Here they are, industrious as bees and as fully armed with stings. Will a war cure anything? Even if defeated, won't they be the same people? Won't they present the same problem? Won't they present the same menace to what we consider as the best and most desirable types of civilization?"
Anderson did not interrupt these questions. When they had all come out, he gravely took another cigar, leisurely lighted it and turned his chair to face the linden at the window. He spoke very mildly.
IHAVEgiven this a great deal of thought. I have read a great deal and I believe I have never known of a writer who furnished what I should call an answer. And that is the most important thing—the vital thing. So I have evolved a simple, natural proposal. It is the only proposal, I think, that will remedy the evil of the German nation—remedy the ugly situation that hangs over the careless earth.
"We know that when young foreigners are educated in considerable part in a country, they generally become at peace with it. Everything, in fact, draws them to this attitude—for instance, their excusable satisfaction in feeling that their sojourn abroad has been a success for them instead of a failure. Any foreign instruction makes the student more of an intelligent, cosmopolitan sympathizer. It knits together warm acquaintances abroad. Every Rhodes scholar is an ally of England. He goes forth bearing kindly messages for her. I have told you how it works with our Americans coming over here to the German universities. They nearly all become pro-Germanic. And this is one reason why our compatriots at home have in general such a downright admiration for what they consider the super-excellence of the Teutons.
"But while this providing of the German education for Americans is pulling so strong in favor of Germany, we have nothing similar in America pulling Germany toward us and our ways. Young Germans are not sent to the United States to study and to lead our lives and to return home bearing good-will and good reports. They stay where they are and become more narrowly, intrinsically Teutons—irreclaimably Teutons. They are left with the undisputed idea that their system of instruction is altogether the best, as proven by the spectacle of aliens coming here for schooling. Why, then, should German lads and misses go abroad to learn? And they don't.
"Now as long as this state of things continues, the German race will remain a tribein itself, and radically at loggerheads with the world. It will be hopelessly separated, unreconciled, inimical. It will be strange and opposed to everyone else—everything else. As you have seen yourself, even the meanings of the most common and essential terms are usually, to the German, the contrary of what they are to the rest of mankind.
"How will there ever be any natural and genuine meeting of the minds, fellowship, community of interests, under present programmes? For centuries civilized countries have been living side by side with the Teutons, have been pursuing education ever more zealously, and still the German brain and character stay profoundly different from the rest and are not understood. They are so different, in fact, that the forces of war and destruction must be maintained as against them and are constant irritants to thought and activity.
"My plan is this. Young German men and women should be amicably educated abroad in very large numbers—the largest well possible. And on a broader basis than the Cecil Rhodes scheme. In our country they would become, from youthful association, more or less fond of our open homes, our sense of democracy,the untrammeled opportunities to go and to do. They would see the advantages of these blessings—or at least their human attraction—among boys and girls.
"Under my programme these Germans, still adolescent, will return home and a little of this foreign education will stick. But their children will do the same. More will stick with them. Then their children, and still more sticking. After fifty or a hundred years you will have a large population in Deutschland thinking and liking and to a great extent living like their Christian and less warlike neighbors. It will be a tremendous beneficial element introduced for the first time into Germany. It will slowly and silently, without friction or loss of self-respect, accomplish an internal revolution.
"Foreign education for Teuton boys and girls! That's the only final answer I can find—the only true one. You see, a war will never accomplish this, nor tariffs or penalties. Such agencies do not change human nature or character or modes of existence. They antagonize, make stubborn or resentful or malevolent. And, unlike other races, the Germans would always remain, as they are to-day, UNITED.This is the explanation of their World Power."
Anderson stopped as if waiting for a comment.
"It all sounds well and is a beautiful way to do it, but how is it practicable?" asked Gard, who had listened attentively, impressed. "How are you going to coax the Germans to enter into this? What benefit will they see in it?"
"You are right," returned Anderson. "That's the difficulty at present. It can't be put in operation, as I see it, unless Germany happens to be defeated in the coming war. If she is defeated she will, of course, be humbled and temporarily sick of fighting, and this proposal could then be readily forced into adoption as one of the post-war measures looking to the quickest rehabilitation of the nation. Anything that will put it on its feet again soon will be most welcome at that time. Meanwhile, the instruments of war, the power to do damage, must not be left in the German's hands. As long as he has them, he will prepare to destroy."
"But if Germany is victorious, as you seem to think she will be?" suggested Gard.
"Oh, then nothing will work. It won't have a chance. What will there be of all this to contemplate? Germany will be the master and its semi-paganism will prevail. The modern Teuton tribes will begin to level the Christian civilizations to the ground just as the Huns leveled the Roman civilization. The Hun disposition in the Germanmustbe eradicated—mustbe destroyed. Until this is done the world will always have these Huns at its gates."...
It was now July in the year of everlasting tragedy—1914. Kirtley must leave for home, as Villa Elsa knew. He talked over his route with Anderson. His interest in Charlemagne made him wish to see at Aix-la-Chapelle the great emperor's tomb, underneath which, according to an old-time legend, the ruler still sits in his white robes of state in his marble chair, looking forward to resurrection to power. So the trip was mapped out through central Germany.
As the time was at hand for Gard to announce his date of setting off, his perplexities before Frau and Elsa grew entangled. But, happily, their knot was cut for him. Von Tielitz, who had long been away, broke in upon the household one morning with glorious news. He had received a commission as bandmaster in the army with fair pay. Most unexpected. A civilian, who could make sport of the military, summoned into the ranks! What could it mean? Something must be in the wind.
At all events he had come to arrange to marry Elsa, and converted the Villa into a hubbub. He was so beside himself that he appeared ready to embrace and marry the first person he met. He was also officious as if conducting a rehearsal. He rushed to Gard's room and overwhelmed him with the tidings. His eye-glasses kept tumbling off. He was upstairs and down, in the flower garden, out at the tea table, and now and then he rushed to the Pleyel and rent the air with its exultant chords.
The family turned the day into celebration. The wine cellar was opened. The kitchen sent forth its hot and overflowing dishes hour after hour until well into the evening. The marriageable Jim Deming and Gard Kirtley were to Villa Elsa as if they had never been. Frau proclaimed in husky sounds that she had not felt so young in thirty years. LuckilyFräulein Wasserhaus had gone off to Brunswick to visit a relative soon after Deming's advent, so she was not in Wiesenstrasse to encounter this joyous climax and Gard's preparations for his eventful journey.
Elsa acted as one overjoyed. It was what she had yearned for and what filled the measure of her Teutonic maiden nature. On seeing her happy like a yellow mermaid on a sunlit, blissful shore, and knowing what Friedrichwaswith all his talent, Gard realized she was never for him or he for her. It had been for him a vagary, an irresponsible venture in ethno-psychology, a poorly based confusion of appreciation with a vague notion of duty intermingled with sentiment.
His illness had cleared his intuitions. The unalluring defects of the Teuton systems of love-making overshadowed his own defects as a suitor. Elsa had been as truly foreign to him as the German habits of eating and drinking. In thinking of her he now knew he had always been conscious of her nation. The German woman, as he had already learned, is sunk into her race. It swallows up her individuality. In marrying her, one married the whole people—the German State—theKaiser. One became possessed not only of a help-meet but of an aggressive political idea.
Now that Gard was a friend instead of a lover, how much easier were his relations with Fräulein! Brooding sensitiveness and responsibility passed into lightsomeness. The unnatural and crankling proceeding of his trying to woo a German girl was smoothed away into a genial indifference. The mental picture of Elsa would remain as one that had attracted him on the wall of his German memories. And like the hundred maids that a youth is smitten with, she would gradually blend into the dim gallery of such pleasant visions of Kirtley's susceptible spring-time—visions which, in all men, fade sweetly into their manhood.
In this manner the cloud of Gard's awkward discomfort in speaking out or acting out his answer to Frau's virile project, had melted away before these lighted-up faces. He felt as if a fog were lifted off his consciousness. He was glad to slip out thus easily. In the lively jumble of robust, rejoicing realities about him, he seemed to have emerged from the fringy edges of a daze.