Villa Elsa Part 8

As for himself, Gard pa.s.sed a sleepless night thinking hotly about the episode. Toward morning he cooled off. These were boors. Why should he take to heart their boorishness? Richness was here indeed.

Just the place to keep finding out the real German. Having let the bars down with such a bang and hullabaloo, the family would from now on readily and fully reveal themselves. It is a poor investigator and observer who is easily s.h.i.+ed away from his purpose by taunts and ill-breeding.

But the miracle was that the Buchers went on exactly as before. They obviously saw no reasons for altering their friendly daily intercourse, nor did they have any idea that he should harbor a grievance. Beginning with the next morning, their usual amicable bearing and attentions continued uninterrupted. The family was not conscious of having tried to give mortal offense or to cause resentment from him.

For, to a German, blows in all senses are a normal part of living.

His social habits indulge themselves in knocks, coa.r.s.e attacks, unseemly abuse, as rather matters of course. He wields a bludgeon where more refined men would cut down with sarcasm or wither one with disdain. Blows are his natural method of instructing others and of getting himself instructed. "Good German blows" are what the Kaiser talked of loudly. To strike as well as to kick is a wholesome, healthful, righteous procedure, not to be grieved over, not to be kept rankling in the bosom. It is truth and fact in action, and action should always be forceful and decisive to be effective. The whipping of a school boy for any just cause should not be remembered by him throughout life as something to be allowed to fester or as calling for angry vengeance.

So Gard's hosts pursued the tenor of their ways as if that detonating night had witnessed nothing. Their insensitiveness about it included insensitiveness about him. In other words, he discovered that as you cannot insult a German, therefore he cannot insult you.

He does not know about such things in the Anglo-Saxon meaning. His conception of social and moral values is so obtusely or radically different from those of the truly occidental civilizations that there is little common ground here. Consequently, in such relations, the Teuton does not feel anything to be sorry for. There is nothing for him to worry about in any shame the next day.

Kirtley learned gradually, through his dealings with tradesmen and in hearing business men talk in the cafes, that this underbred att.i.tude extended into the German secular world. A German may cheat you, lie to you, take a grossly unfair advantage of your good faith, but he will not expect that this is going to interfere with a continuance of your business relations. It is only a part of the hard game of gain. If you indignantly enumerate to him the facts of your unpleasant discovery, he sees little about which to bear a grudge. He is not humiliated. He merely and unfortunately did not succeed, or succeeded while unluckily you found him out.

Likewise if one lies to him, cheats him or otherwise mistreats him in a transaction, he does not permanently lay it up against the evil-doer. For he knows he would have done the same thing under similar circ.u.mstances. He is prepared to go on next week with the usual dealings. Of course he will complain with prompt vigor, and rage in his favorite fas.h.i.+on, but it is only because of his material loss or discomfort, not because of broken standards of trusted faith lying dishonored in the dust.

All this alien side of German character thus came to be lain before Gard like a scroll unrolled. He read its lines with eyes blinking in wonderment. And this was the people who were to lead the earth.

The only part of it he felt the Buchers did not comprehend and were disappointed about, was that he did not candidly acknowledge the porcine truth of all they had shouted at him. He was of a heterogeneous conglomeration called Yankees. He should admit it. He was stupid not to. For him not to join in the Bucher chorus of Germany's greatness was a poor return for all they were doing for his ease and profit. But he was an American and of course the Americans--

It must be quickly acknowledged, it is true, that Kirtley's experiences and observations along these channels did not necessarily show that the Teuton is less honest than others. Let it be granted that he is fully as upright as anyone in the sum total of his commercial transactions. The point Gard uncovered was that here were full-fledged race traits and habitudes which stood counter to Christian ideals, were pagan in type, were due to a lower stratum of moral and social perceptions.

The explosion in Villa Elsa led him on to another revealment. What was it but a rather puerile performance? Tactless, boisterous youngsters blurt out the disagreeable sentiments of a household. The Buchers had acted like children. Laying aside all question of the wonderful German trained mind, knowledge, efficiency, Gard observed so much that was boy-like and girl-like in the adult Teuton life. No country has such a wealth of toys and juvenile story books as Germany. The Teuton weaves his nursery tales, so grotesque and strikingly cruel, into his grown-up years. All this influence continues with him and affects him strongly as long as he lives. The mature German can kick, sulk, whine, much as his offspring do. When irritated he can easily act like an _enfant terrible_.

What is quaint, droll, distorted, comically ugly, or of a gingerbready effect, in Germany, is the expression of this childish strain. And it appeals particularly there to the youthfulness that remains in the hearts of visiting foreigners. It is accordingly one of the most popular Teuton aspects, especially among women and the young.

CHAPTER XV

MILITARY BLOCKHEADS

Gard's attentions to Elsa continued intermittently, and as if detached, on their unadvancing course. He had, however, reached the stage of playing piano duets with her. This is always hopeful.

Occasionally they rambled through Schubert's little Vienna love waltzes and other selections that could top off an evening with melodies of a sprightly and sentimental nature. He felt he was becoming acquainted with her in a way he otherwise could not. She was more cheerful at these times, exhilarated by the music.

He had learned a large part of his playing by ear. Reading at sight was a fresh experience. She corrected his fingering while helping fill out his conversational vocabulary. It was certainly most agreeable to have Fraulein take his fingers in her warm, plump, flexible hand with conscientious authority and show him the method of the Dresden Conservatoire.

Think of a young and l.u.s.trous miss being able to instruct him like a veteran! He had never considered American girls in such a light--had never expected to learn anything of profitable skill from them.

Elsa, for her part, regarded it as a curious and amusing experience to watch this tall man playing like a boy. The musical Germans she knew were adept at some instrument.

He formed the habit of adding _en_, or its variants, to the English equivalent of the German word he could not think of, and she seemed to be struck by this as a very original fas.h.i.+on of eliciting information. On one occasion at the piano they heard the entrance bell below clang, announcing a visitor, and Gard, hastening to disappear upstairs, exclaimed:

"Wir mussen--wir mussen--_stopfen_!"

The word for stop would not come to him. Fraulein blushed and snickered and ran off to tell her mother about Herr Kirtley and his German. He was frightened. What absurdity had he uttered? He got to his dictionary as soon as he could and found he had said--We must darn stockings!

The incident nearly always put Elsa in good humor. She doubtless considered Yankees an odd folk. How could they expect to become civilized with their rudimentary attainments? Must he not be seeming to her a sort of freak?...

But, for the most part, she continued to hold him aloof, and he concluded the reason lay in the mystery which shadowed her young life and to which he could trace no clue. What could it frankly be that sent her to her room and to Heine? The beginning of the answer seemed to come at last in the form of a youth who suddenly soared in at Villa Elsa.

Herr Friedrich von Tielitz-Leibach was a composer and a music director. He was the son of a neighbor who had moved away, and the musical Buchers doted on him as one with a s.h.i.+ning future. Kirtley had often heard them refer to Friedrich as to so many of their friends of whom he knew nothing.

When Friedrich called, at very rare intervals, it was always a wonderful day. The steady, stolid routine of the home became perturbed, gladdened. He was a German of Hungarian extraction, and the Magyar blood gave him a dash and sparkle. He was tall, very thin, with the intellectual look that black-rimmed gla.s.ses produce.

His eyes harmonized in color with the black shock of tossing hair that set off a distinguished appearance. And, like a traditional votary of music, he wore a great black cloak swinging around him with an operatic air, giving the impression that he was just going to or coming from the theater.

Highly agitated, gilded with flattery, readily acquainted, he bubbled over promptly in confidences and intimate allusions. He was ever br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the freshest gossip of himself and his exalted career; and his personal experiences, he a.s.sumed, were bound to be unique and entertaining.

Making friends with everyone, he insisted on calling on Gard up in the attic room, pleased to welcome such an "excellent person"--as he had heard downstairs--to the fold of the family. But did they not lead such dull, stagnant, imbecile lives, moored here in this stodgy, out-of-the-world suburb, where so many idiots live who wonder how the world can come to an end when it's round? Friedrich truly hoped Herr Kirtley would not be bored to death.

To-day the musician had finished with his final military examination and was at last free from ever having to serve. He made a diverting story of it and had hastened to the Villa to recount the congratulatory news.

"I had to report this morning for military service, just having got back to Dresden. So I went to the Platz and there sat an officer as big as a hogshead. And I hope not as full. He began treating me as if I were a truant school boy. 'Stand up! Sit down! Stand up again!'

So the examination commenced. I knew I was not fit for the army. I did not want to go. I hate it. But they were after me. He said:

"'Take off your gla.s.ses!' I removed them. He said:

"'What is that letter off there?' Mein Gott! it looked as far off as Pillnitz. It was my left eye out of which I had seen nothing since I was a baby.

"'I see nothing,' I said. He yelled:

"'You can!' Then I said:

"'I can't!' Then he roared out:

"'Why can't you?'

"'Because I am blind in it!' He glared at me as if I were a perjurer.

"'It is blind and you can see nothing out of it?'

"And now I was getting out of patience with this blockhead. Blind and can't see out of it! They put the blockheads in the army because there is no other place for them. I think that must be the reason why there are more synonyms for blockhead in the German language than in any other--we have the largest army. I said:

"'Of course I can't see anything out of it because it's blind, you---- ' I was just on the point of adding 'fool' when I stopped myself in time. It was the military--the august _military_. One must hold his peace before the magnificent military. He thought I was cheating about my eye because I did not want to march to Moscow, to Paris. And I don't want to march to Moscow or Paris. They're so far.

"So this stupid _Kerl_ took me over to a higher officer and still another. They sat there as stiff and self-complacent as wooden saints in a plaster church. They too shouted at me They were so suspicious, although I had never had the pleasure of meeting any of them before.

"'You say you are blind in one eye and can't see out of it?'

"I screamed, 'No, no, no!' They thought I might be going insane.

They examined my eye, my gla.s.ses, and tried all kinds of tests to try to fool my poor eye. But it remained my faithful friend, and they were mad. And I was just as mad and ready to shriek at them--'Blind! Blind! Blind!' I was losing half a day for nothing over their stupidities.

"Then the _Dummkopfen_ began to enter it up on their official blotters. That seemed to take forever too. I was nearly exhausted.

They solemnly wrote me down as blind in one eye and cannot see out of it. And at last, Gott sei Dank! they let me go, glowering at me as if they were still sure I was somehow tricking them. And here I am--alive!"

Friedrich's ludicrous recital, embellished by a hundred gestures and poses, had raised a guffaw even in Villa Elsa.