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Only Rudi could be called somewhat martial. Hydraulics was his
branch, and his frequent absences on missions about which he assumed
an important and mystifying air, such as is, for that matter, usual
in bumptious young men, never caused any comment or visible interest
on the part of the others. He gave himself out to be close to the
_militaire_, familiar with its secrets, as he freely blew his
cigarette smoke across the meal table; and to him the family
deferred on these subjects. Surely all this was to Gard very
foreign and interesting.

"What a different race of beings! What a curious revelation to
observe, what a doughty complex to comprehend!"

He was more confounded by the attitude of the women. They were even
fiercer than the men. To them the other Europeans were a wholly bad
lot. Those neighbors were so much in the way of the good, all-worthy
Germans. But it was on the English that this feminine hatred vented
itself most turbulently. Frau Bucher shouted that she would be more
than glad--she would be hilarious--if war came.

"I would wear my last rag for years, see my two boys dead on the
battle front, if Gross Britain could be knocked into the bottom of
the sea."

Was all this a part of that national gladness Gard was observing in
Germany and could not gage, could not yet give an explicit and
sufficient reason for? Those old-time Teuton liberals, masters of
prose and verse--how would they feel at home in this modern
Rhineland of hysterical spleen and arms provocative? Was it
possible he had really come on a sort of fool's errand?




CHAPTER VII

GERMAN LOVING


Fraeulein Elsa was a blooming, almost blue-eyed young woman of
twenty. Such a fresh, strawberry and cream complexion under a
plenteous harvest of flaxen hair would not be associated in America
with anyone very serious. _There_ she would have been thought
arrayed by Nature as a tearing blonde, suitable for the equivocal
light stage, or as a frivolous artist's model, or as promenade girl
in a suit and cloak house. But in Fraeulein the extraordinary
combination of volatile comeliness and unimpeachable earnestness
daily worked growing wonders in Kirtley.

It is a luckless young traveler who does not find himself or herself
engaged in some romance, permanent or transient, which ever after
sweetens or gilds the memories of the tour. Moreover Gard was at an
age when youthful susceptibilities were softened by the
lackadaisicalness of his returning state of health and hope.

So his difficulties with the German language, feasting, sleeping and
redoubtable ways in general, were to be complicated by German
loving. The shining object of his tenderness--how she was to lend
brightness to the short dismal days and long black nights of the
Teuton winter! At first he had asked himself:

"Is a campaign of the heart in Deutschland as portentous, dreadfully
systematic, a proceeding as the other undertakings? Do the Germans
go at that sort of thing, too, hammer and tongs?"

The glowing Fraeulein was able-bodied, full-chested, with every
golden promise of a rich maternityhood. Did American girls have
any bosoms to speak of? Gard seemed now to have never noticed that
feature in them. Yet bounding breasts are the unashamed pride of
German girls.

While the Yankee miss is often to be identified by complaints of a
physical nature, Elsa had no aches or pains to talk about. She had
a strength competent to support all her energetic, meritorious
endeavors. A thoroughly well woman--what an exceptional being, a
god-send! It is not the fashion with maids beyond the Rhine to be
ailing. Weak backs, nervous prostration, indigestion and similar
indispositions were not topics at the Buchers'. To be coquettishly
delicate or romantically ill is a liability to the Germans. Health,
unenchanting as it may be, is a prime asset. That the Teuton women
are gormands--what is that compared with their willingness to mother
six or more sturdy youngsters?

Had Frau Bucher been an Elsa at twenty? Yes, in the main, yet
impossible to conceive. Would Elsa become at fifty-five like her
parent? Heaven forbid! But Youth ignores such deterrent
probabilities.

The daughter and her manifold achievements easily bowled Gard over.
Was he in love or did he merely imagine he was? Was he filling with
the divine fire or only being smitten? Who could ever tell? And what
is, in fact, the practical difference? Kindly old Rebner had hinted
that it would not be amiss in Gard to bring home one of the
excellent German _maedchens_ with her brimming stock of health and
efficiency.

"She would be an answer to our American servant girl question, flood
your fireside with invigorating music, and rear a house full of
robust children. It would be a novel and commendable experiment and
experience for you, Kirtley."

Of course Heine is the approved route with a German girl. Gard
borrowed from Fraeulein an old copy of the "Buch der Lieder." Very
obliging at times like the rest of the family in the business of
improving his accent, she urged that if he would commit some of
those little prized poems to heart, she would supervise his
intonations. He eagerly betook himself to this charming exercise,
and it was not long before he was inviting her to walk along that
alluring path through the meadow by the persuasive water. Here he
repeated over and over to her the very pertinent lines,

Thou'rt like unto a flower,

and

Thou lov'st me not, thou lov'st me not,

under the conscientious reproofs of her engaging diction.

But never more than for half an hour at a time. This was all she
could spare him. Her days were very strictly divided by her pressing
concerns. A sightly young woman so tremendously busy--it was almost
exasperating.

And he could not establish any tender quality of relationship that
would warm a delectable exchange of rosy intimations or tentative
expressions of budding feelings of delight. It was teacher and
pupil. She unsuspectingly insisted on following her role of
preceptress and very earnest was she about it, too.

She saw nothing comical in his frequent linguistic stumblings that
would naturally lead to melting moods. As the Germans have, of
course, little humor, she found in these faulty exhibitions only
causes for disappointed glances and reprimands approaching severity.
Often you would have thought he was a boy of ten reciting his lesson
at her knee.

"Now Thursday by half past ten, you must have that line right or I
will _scold_ you." And she would sometimes laugh a little in her
discouragement.

She looked upon it as a duty, a voluntary drudgery, but which, she
assured him, she was most pleased to do. For she loved Heine--raved
about him, like sentimental German maids. She could never go over
his verse often enough. And so she encouraged Gard to keep on. It
was a reflected part of her normal disciplined life of acquisition.

After a month of these tactics he realized he was making no headway
toward--he did not acknowledge what. Young men as a type did not
seem to Elsa of special interest any more than a hundred other
objects on earth. And then the cold weather before long put an end
to the little promenades of rime by the shore, and Gard had to try
other lines of attack on this radiant and beflowered German
fortress.

The park of fir trees lay quite beyond the meadow. It was a silent,
evocative spot, unfrequented except for a peasant now and then
trudging along under a bundle of wood or a weather-beaten basket of
provisions. Kirtley had managed to stray that far once with Elsa,
but learned that the mother was expected to accompany at such
distances. It provoked his silent comment,

"As nearly as I can estimate, about a half a mile from home is all
that is allowed a German miss unchaperoned."

It was the same when he invited Fraeulein to the opera or theater.
The parent must attend. As she was equally occupied, it did not
appear easy for him to arrange for the two. Besides, Frau Bucher
killed everything under these confounding and confounded
circumstances. She sat between him and her daughter and ruled the
conversation. It was little better than taking her alone, so he
abandoned also these enterprises.

In the talk at table the family, with Teuton tactlessness, now and
then cried out the surpassing merits of the German young man.
Unquestionably he led all others. Gard met no success in stemming
the tide, miffed as he was about this social seclusion of the
daughter. He soon saw his mistake in feeling personally hurt, as if
insulted. It was but the custom. Could it be indeed a fact that
German youths were such moral reprobates that girls could not be
trusted to their unguarded companionship? The question had no
meaning to his hosts. It was useless to hint of such an idea,
burning as he often was to launch it upon the waves of discussion.
To them, chaperoning signified the highest morals.

They exploded with, "It may very well be as you say in America!
That is to be expected. Are there any morals in the United States?
We have heard awful things. There are the Mormons. There is
co-education. And young girls of the best families go around loose
with men day and night. What _could_ be the result? Free love. And
free love means cheap love or no love at all. Admittedly pretty low
conditions for virtue. What else can be looked for in a country
where all sorts of people come promiscuously from everywhere?
Divorces, voting females, slatterns, homelessness, neglected, poorly
educated children."

If, in passing, America and Americans were referred to in the
family, and this was rare, Elsa, Gard noticed, kept silent. Yet she
could be very wrought up about other Europeans. This nursed his
fancies. He interpreted it in terms of promise. Elsa, he decided,
was a good girl in a hedge-hog environment of unbelievable traits,
of warring contrasts.




CHAPTER VIII

GERMAN COURTSHIP


Once during the winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which
he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do
not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her
attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed
she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had
the rickets. So he speedily gave this up.

Thus he became aware how vastly different are courtship and other
relations between young men and young women in America and in
Germany. He asked himself.

"Are the German ways more civilized?" Certainly, to the Teuton, they
represent a more creditable and becoming evolution. He always
stoutly favors his own customs, and finds little here to discuss.
Even if a rotten morality in his young gods is to be assumed, this
would be proper as in the young gods of the mythologies.

The Teuton marriage refers plainly to property. The language has
prominent terms indicating how espousal means goods with a woman
attached to them. There is scarcely an equivalent in English.
Courtship in the form of natural little raptures that disport in and
beautify enamored companionship in youth, the pure, unfettered,
mystic attraction between the sexes in blossoming time, are
practically unknown to the German social life. The full gloss of
fancy, the velveting of manners, the felicitous fabrication of
innocent emotions into a blessed garment of many colors, find their
development outside the domain of Thor. Such associations have there
no charming playtime, but forthwith make for permanent good or
permanent evil.

Accordingly, for Gard, in his fond inclinations, there was no
experience with Cupids about the Bucher flower garden. Only, as it
were, a sort of rough sledding on broken, jolting ice! And he noted
the comparative absence of such delicate sentiment in German
literature. Aside from Heine, who became French, German letters have
relatively little to offer on this score. The very language
discourages love-making. Since Heine's exile a century ago, the
increasing might of the armored Hohenzollerns had finally almost
killed all this.

Gard was thrown out of gear in another way. Fraeulein's lack not only
of amatory complaisance but of social polish or even facility kept
him dubious and disconcerted. She brusquely alternated between a
sisterly tenderness of familiarity, almost exaggerated, only to
follow it by a sudden, disquieting flop over on the side of a
formality as stiff as buckram. She would be as distant as if they
were two boarders having a tiff in a _pension_. These detachments
were not because of anything Kirtley had done or said. They formed
a natural example of Gothic undevelopedness in human relations, the
rude unevenness of beginners.

But, then, he forgave her for this.

"Is she not extremely occupied--full of pursuits? How admirable!"

It shamed him, spurred him on not a little. For days he would only
see her at the generous meals where she exclaimed over her dread of
getting fat. That usually furnishes a German with an excuse for
being helped to more. She dutifully played of an evening in the
family orchestra, yet this was a musical, not a social, happening.
The severe if rich harmonies that were favored, largely with the
idea of drill, created generally an atmosphere of austerity.

She could not understand Gard's offers to carry her umbrella over
her to a class or to bring her a storm coat in case of need. Such
attentiveness meant intrusions almost to be resented. She appeared
to frown upon any kindly little considerations that should have been
agreeable to her or at any rate convenient. She had been brought up
to do everything for herself. There was nothing of the clinging vine
about her. Young German women are not expected to lean upon men in
this wise.

Presents of candy or what-not are looked upon with an inquisitive or
doubtful eye, especially by the parents. For the German girl has no
charming secrets from her father and mother. They must know all,
with immediate conjectures about marriage. Troubling gifts,
consequently, became rather out of the question with Gard.

He feared that Fraeulein Elsa might reflect sometimes the feeling of
unfriendliness which he was aware of in the supercilious Rudi. The
latter exhibited a negligent attitude of indifference toward Gard,
though it was cloaked under casualness. There was a sinister air
about the young engineer, and she would be bound to follow
submissively anyone breathing the military ozone.

Under all these unsettling circumstances, Kirtley's uncertain
attachment for the German language did not increase by Peter
Schlemihl strides. Besides, his regular teacher was something like a
wild boar. He had proceeded to dragoon Gard as if he were a lad. And
Herr Keller's person was offensive. He exhaled a smell unpleasant if
scholastic. Dressed in a soiled, shiny, black garb, and with a
bristly mustache and beard which often showed egg of a morning, he
talked blatantly of having been in Paris as a soldier in '70. It was
his one excursion out of Saxony.

Even the German language at such a cost was not very inviting.
Finally Gard received a curt note to the effect that if he were not
more assiduous, the lessons would better end. Herr Keller did not
want to be bothered with triflers.

"Bounced from school!" Kirtley exclaimed. It was the first time. He
took advantage of this opportunity to discontinue.

He could see that his hosts did not blame the professor. Why, he was
capable of forcibly drilling the Teuton language and literature into
a post hole. This doubtless confirmed Kirtley's failure as a student
in their eyes. And this was to be looked for in Americans who think
that they can acquire knowledge and know life by gadding about and
"observing," instead of by book study. The awful German language
seemed doomed to blast Gard's affectionate hopes.

While his burgeoning amorousness met with such blighting
encouragement in the direction of Fraeulein Elsa, it encountered
unexpectedly an immense and yearning bosom in another quarter.
Fraeulein Wasserhaus, next door, clamored for a mate. With cowlike
simpleness she almost bellowed out for love. Of an age verging on
the precarious she waddled into and out from Villa Elsa with bulging
breasts so bared, under the transparent pretenses of white gauze,
that Frau Bucher declared herself shocked. She said that the
Wasserhaus was trying to be a part of the disgraceful Naked _Kultur_
that had been assailing Germany.

When this bovine soul came to know of Kirtley's presence, she
fastened her consuming desires upon him. She had a brother in
America and actively developed a hankering to go there and be near
him. Yoking up with a Yankee would be a most natural and fitting
state in which to negotiate the Atlantic.

As the Bucher wall was too high for her to hang over in her
languishing ardors, she hung over her gate to offer a book or a
tiger lily to Gard as he passed. Several times when the
pachydermatous Tekla banged her way upstairs with an armful of
utensils in her work, a bouncing compote or other unabashed delicacy
would be tumbling about on a dustpan or a slop basin, bound for the
attic room by the linden tree. Twice a belabored missive accompanied
these little couriers, anxiously quoting some anguishing
sentimentality from one of the household poets writhing amid the
pages of the affecting Gartenlaube.

It was at first so bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the
neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could
grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item
of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished to be
especially entertaining.

"Mein Gott!" the Frau would cry out when going over her troubles and
arduous occupations. "And I've got to get a husband for the
Wasserhaus yet!" The Herr often went into a deafening rage about it.

"Is there no way to keep that lachrymose female out of my house with
her belated calf-love? She annoys the good Herr Kirtley." And he
would toddle out, slamming the door like a clap of thunder.

The family assumed a very self-conscious behavior when the lorn
maiden was mentioned, and were anxious Gard should know that, while
unfortunately she was their neighbor, she was not at all of their
stratum.

"Poor girl!" Gard mused. There were nearly half again as many women
as men in Saxony.

At last he came to know there seemed to be a mystery about Fraeulein
Elsa--something which was hidden from him. And a new and deeper
interest was summoned forth from within his breast. Occasionally at
table she was silent as a mile stone. Some days she did not appear
to his sight at all. And then, when he did see her, she evidently
wanted to avoid him. Very true it was that she often pored over the
little volume of Heine in her room without a word to anyone. But, of
a sudden, she would become frankly in evidence again--a floral and
quite superb girl, resolutely "making good," as was her wont.

"What is it?" Gard wondered.

None of the family ever referred to it. Even in his intimate talks
with her mother, whom Gard now and then practiced his German upon as
she was plying her needle, nothing was divulged. There was no young
German coming to the house with regularity. Consequently, could it
be love difficulties? Yet something was wrong. It lent respect to
Elsa, threw enhancement about her.

Gard concluded that the roughness of the Bucher family life
mortified her. It was often well-nigh outlandish. How could she
have so ardently studied the beautiful in music and colors without
realizing this?

But he had not been long enough in Germany to be advised that
knowledge is not expected there to enter into the inner life. What
one is has little in common with what one knows or can dexterously
do. Study does not pass into character. The German, with all his
acquirements, does not look for moral or esthetic effect upon the
heart or soul.

German women esteem the strong fighter, the rugged accomplisher the
boisterous enthusiast, among their men. Whether these are atheistic,
immoral, boorish, cruel, are considerations of secondary importance.
The daughters marry them with little hesitation. Men are men,
supreme, to be adored. Women are to be tolerated, stepped on, sat
upon. Man is the master, woman is the willing servant.




CHAPTER IX

A JOURNALIST


Gard's experience in perfecting himself in German met with another
rebuff. Under the prompting of his parental friends in Villa Elsa he
concluded at length to attend a course of lectures given by a
celebrated professor who was, however, known to be of an
exceptionally cantankerous disposition. Kirtley had become aware of
the querulous restrictions and exactions attending the most peaceful
German activities and made sure of his ground at the class room,
whither he went one morning with encouraging expectations. He asked
the janitor if the hearings were free and public. They were.

It was the usual amphitheater and Gard entered to find only a few
regular students down in the front rows. He decided on a seat alone
in the center. Herr Professor, be-spectacled, soon clambered up on
the rostrum and squatted dumpily. Blear-eyed he scanned the place
and blurted out:

"There is a stranger in the room. The lecture will not proceed until
he departs." Gard, having been assured by the janitor, could not
imagine that he himself was meant. The man of prodigious learning
shouted angrily, throwing out his arm toward Kirtley:

"Must I repeat that there is a foreigner in the audience? I shall
not begin until his presence has been removed."

Gard went away, incensed. Surely, he swore to himself, Teuton
erudition acts so often like a mad bear ready to claw away at men
and things. He never attended another day lecture.

But he had to get on with his German. He decided to put an
advertisement for an instructor in the Dresden _Nachrichten_. At its
_bureau_ he ran counter to a lot of ifs and ands at the hands of a
surly young clerk. A German, naturally gruff, only needs a small
position to increase his acerbity. His newspapers display, likewise,
a disagreeable officiousness, being nearly always, to some extent,
bureaucratic organs. They are lords, not servants, of the public.
They do not appear to want your business, your money.

Gard's imperfect German balked him, too. After he had been back and
forth to the little window three or four times, trying to alter his
"ad" to suit the rasping individual whose face Gard could scarcely
catch a glimpse of by stooping down to the aperture, an American
stepped forward. He was a steel gray man of about sixty and was
inserting a notice. He said he was familiar with all the rigors of
such a proceeding, being a correspondent for the Chicago _Gazette_.

"Perhaps I can help," volunteered Miles Anderson. "After having had
scraps and fights about this sort of thing around this country for
seven years--though the Germans won't fight--I've finally got the
hang of it. You can save three or four words by a different jargon.
I can see you are an American because you take up more room about
this than necessary. German economy, you must remember."

Gard was glad to find a friend of his race. And after the
advertisement was disposed of, they repaired to a neighboring beer
hall to refresh and relieve their feelings. Anderson was
smooth-shaven, with piercing gray eyes under bushy eyebrows, his
head presenting the appearance of just having been in a barber's
chair. With the insistent curiosity of a practiced interviewer he
wanted to know why Kirtley had come to this godless land; where he
was hanging out; and all about the Buchers.

A bachelor, Anderson had become toughened by hotel and _pension_. He
thought Kirtley very fortunate in getting right into a family where
the veritable German bloom had not been rubbed off by foreigners, by
boarders. It would be a most fragrant experience. Here Kirtley would
see on the native heath the genuine German of the great middle class
that makes up the might of the nation.

"Can you read German comfortably?" asked Anderson. "What do you make
of it? I've been studying it for seven years and sometimes it seems
as if I hadn't got much further than the verb to hate."

"You can't give me any short cuts about it, then?" laughed Gard.

"Yes, I can--yes, I can. Here's a little compilation and analysis of
the irregular verbs," explained his new acquaintance, pulling a
green brochure from his pocket. "Only costs a mark. You can get a
second-hand one at the book stalls by the Augustus bridge. I always
carry it with me and con it over and over. Good for the
pronunciation. If you get the irregular verbs of a language well fed
into your system, you've got the language by the windpipe.

"Then buy _Simplicissimus_. You'll pick up a good deal from
that--the popular expressions, the phrases and exclamations that are
going. If you learn to use the exclamations, it makes you
interesting and well-liked. It gives the other fellow the chance to
do the talking. _Simplicissimus_ and that kind of thing are better
than the dry, stilted German classics--'Ekkehard,' 'Nathan der
Weise' and all that discarded stuff. But remember that _esprit_ was
not given the Germans, because it would hide their Boeotian
stupidity."

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