Villa Elsa Part 11

"Say, see here, old chap. Are you trying to make fun of me? Is this a joke? I don't want a walrus, thirty years old, with ragbag clothes that fit her a foot off. She has a gait like an ice wagon. Why, she couldn't get a job as window-washer in the street car shops of Erie, Pay."

CHAPTER XX

AN AMERICAN VICTORY

Deming's campaign against the terrible German language was unable to advance perceptibly beyond the stage of preparations. These were somewhat elaborate, especially from the standpoint of expense. He had a multiplicity of instructors and grammars. If they had been placed side by side they might have reached from the Green Vault to the Zwinger.

He blamed these agencies of instruction. His "professors" he generally picked up at the Stadt Gotha where he played billiards.

While these parties were fair with the ivories, they could not seem to knock any caroms of German around the cushions of Jim's brain.

His daily routine was like this: At ten, his lesson in Dutch.

Teacher would come. Great show of hospitality. There must be something to drink. The preceptor must try one of the fancy pipes, of which Deming had collected a large array in Germany. He would be feeling knocked in this morning, having been up late consuming numerous bocks in amicable emulation of the local prowess. He had not got around to his lesson and had concluded he did not think much of his present grammar. Herr Preceptor would suggest procuring another which would strew roses no doubt along the th.o.r.n.y path.

Capital idea. Of course they must then wait for the new grammar.

Adjournment at eleven to the cafe for billiards. Deming was a good wielder of the cue. He said the Germans were too be-spectacled and blear-eyed to play well and by three o'clock he had usually won quite a number of marks. This was making "easy money." It went toward paying for his evening's entertainment and was good economy.

His pleasure account would not look so large to his governor. At three, to his hotel for afternoon dress. Evenings it was some other form of diversion. Home at all hours.

This was his day of study, of which his hopeful parents learned the promising side. Someone advised him that if he did not try so hard to master German, it would come easier. But he experimented with this plan for a week and told Gard:

"When you don't bone over the blamed language, it's surprising how much you don't know about it. It still takes me an hour and a half to hold a five minutes' conversation."

In two months he was thumbing page ten of the grammar, but he had seized upon a good many slang phrases, supercharged e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

Though the undercurrent of his discouragement about his progress was considerable, it interfered little with his acquainting him proficiently with the restaurant world of Dresden. He saw and heard what was going on in those quarters, and through him Kirtley learned of that phase of German character and habits.

In view of everything, there had finally been no decent, reasonable way for Gard but to let Deming, professedly zealous of knowing German and seeing Teuton home life, into the Bucher circle. Aware that Jim was quite innocent enough morally, Gard avoided introducing him to Von Tielitz and Messer whose depravities might prove harmful. But Deming at last met the former at Loschwitz and the two became friends just before Friedrich left in quest of another Kapellmeistership. The friction or explosion Gard rather expected between them over Fraulein did not occur. While he had dreaded such a happening for Jim's sake, it might have cleared the atmosphere pleasantly for his own. But Friedrich was delighted that Herr Deming showed his old neighbors, the Buchers, such munificent courtesies, and Jim thought Von Tielitz the most brilliant chap he had ever known.

Kirtley waited with fear, with trembling and also with some hopeful interest, for the fireworks resulting from Deming's induction to Villa Elsa. And they promptly began to soar, for Jim had, in his way, all the American speed, and proceeded to overwhelm the household with his attentions. It was a case of swift enthusiasm about the whole family. Unlike Kirtley he did not care how many of the members accompanied the Fraulein and him. All were welcome.

Though he openly displayed his fascination about the Fraulein, it had none of that tender sentiment which Gard was dissembling before his friend. Nevertheless it appeared to be a violent case of love at first sight, and before the first sight.

Kirtley dropped out of the running. He excused himself by the necessity of burying himself deeper in his books on Teuton origins and traits. In a brief week the Buchers had forgotten him. All was Herr Deming--the wonderful Herr Deming--the fortunate youth who was bringing the witchery of good luck into the drab home. It was Herr Deming morning, noon and night.

There were theater parties, suppers on Bruhl Terrace, plans for the next dance. Jim spread it on thick, and the dutiful, docile Elsa was swept along with the rest, although with a reserve in evocation as became the modesty of a maiden who was manifestly the pivotal center of all this vertiginous attraction and activity. The Buchers suddenly evinced a great and favorable curiosity about America.

Their att.i.tude toward it was revolutionized. They plied Gard with questions. What was living like there? It must be most desirable.

Gard came across convenient hand books of knowledge, inconvenient encyclopedias and atlases, lying here and there in the house, with pages opened freely at the United States. Frau Bucher became vociferous in praise of the advantages of the Yankee fashion of courtship over the slow, economical, dull, German process of match-making.

The household was overturned. Its affairs got dreadfully behind.

Mother was mightily absorbed in getting out and fixing up imposing old dresses, laces, wraps, that were heirlooms or dated from her bridal days of a quarter of a century before. Elsa's lessons in etching and her methodical hours for perfecting her manifold talents, became badly confused.

The great thing was driving at the fashionable hour in the Grosse Garten. This was what the Buchers had never dreamed of. In the winter only the royal and very aristocratic families drove there.

The common people, who might extravagantly expend a few marks to indulge in this pastime of n.o.bility in summer, were frozen out of it in winter. Hot drinks in beer halls were then more to their taste.

But many an afternoon at four Deming, with his two ladies overdressed for the occasion in the dowdy German manner, occupying a handsome, heated limousine decorated with a conspicuous mirror and with Parma violets gently disengaging a delicate perfume, fell in right behind the king's household if possible, and toured the park in stately measure, being numbered, no doubt, by the open-mouthed beholder on the sidewalk, among the social elect in Saxony.

Elsa was as good as engaged, as good as married. In her mother's eyes, bloodshot with all this glory of excitement, her daughter was already dwelling in a palace in that amazing city of Erie, in that splendid commonwealth of Pennsylvania, of whose double fame she had never before heard. For, of course, Deming sang constantly of the wonders of his native haunts, where wealth flowed out of the ground and the trolley system was the best in the world.

Thus the Americanization of Villa Elsa was accomplished in the twinkling of an eye. No more did Gard hear of the Yankee pigs. No more did he hear of the disgusting Yankee billions. Germany and America in union would form the blessed state which would command the globe, and the two excelling peoples, by intermarrying, would produce a race too far ahead and above Frau Bucher's hoa.r.s.e vocabulary to admit of much more than her Ach Himmels and Ach Gotts.

CHAPTER XXI

A PEOPLE PECULIAR OR PAGAN?

Concurrent with all these lively happenings Kirtley had cultivated the acquaintance of Miles Anderson. The two became very friendly.

Gard had been so rudely treated by the great German professor in the lecture room that he was quite willing to conclude he could learn from the journalist far more of what he was interested in than from a Teuton university pulpit.

Anderson, like himself, had entered Germany ignorant of the nation and its folk, and fully disposed to find almost everything worthy the highest praise. The elder's vivid convictions, his caustic reflections, were honestly born of what he had seen and heard in different parts of the land, not of what the Germans said of themselves in books, as was the customary rule. By virtue of his calling he had superior opportunities for observation. He was therefore not a negligible imparter of information.

Gard usually found him in a high-ceilinged, majestic chamber in a typical Dresden _pension_, frequented, however, by only three or four boarders. It was a little like a home for Anderson, even if gloomily august in the German style. Dark woodwork, severely waxed floors on which Gard often slipped violently, huge doors, huge chairs and tables--everything large to suit the national taste for big Teuton G.o.ds and supermen. Long, thick stuffs concealed the pa.s.sageways and windows and contributed to the absence of cheering light--that sign and symbol of the Gothic environment and disposition.

The first question the old man usually plumped was:

"How's your German going?"

"Slowly. Pegging along. I suppose it's because I don't get up much of a liking for it. There's something about it that goes against my grain."

And then Anderson would be off for that particular session. On one early occasion he had said, jestingly:

"I guess you will have to fall back upon the natural method."

"What's that?" had come back the innocent interrogatory.

"Take a sweetheart. She will teach you more useful German in a month than you can learn from the pedagogues in a year. Right here in the best parts of Dresden are streets where these ladies can be rented with their rooms per week or per month cheap, with all the German you want thrown in. Are we to a.s.sume it is by this system that the German universities are able to turn out what the world believes are the best students?"

"I never heard anything about that back home," confessed Kirtley, always letting the bars down to encourage a monologue.

"Of course not. That would be to interfere with our American readiness to admit German transcendence."

"But how do you harmonize the frank state of morals here with the fact that the Germans are the great religious authorities? How have they established such a reputation abroad for the morality that is a.s.sumed to go with Protestantism?"

"That is simple enough. First, by claiming that the French are degenerate. Second, by retaining religion with its morals as an adjunct of an unmoral and authoritative militarism. Religion is to them a topic for expert investigation and study just as is militarism or any natural product--oil, coal, the chemical elements, anything. The Teuton specialist goes at it as at any objective science. His a.n.a.lytical and synthetic processes simply explore in his own subterranean caverns apropos of theology. He has taken over the Bible as the Kaiser has taken over Jerusalem. Wilhelm is becoming the Cerberus of Christianity--sole and surly guardian of its meanings and influence.

"But you never see any men in these German churches, do you? They don't go to church. Nor the women very much. You see old women and children at worship. This is because the German has always typically worshipped Gott on the battlefield or in the military camps--out in the open. The German G.o.d is an out-of-doors G.o.d and is distinctively a.s.sociated with the thought of war. G.o.d within walls, within a church, is a deity of good will on earth. He is a deity of peace.

Naturally this does not appeal to the Goth. He don't pay much lively attention to G.o.d unless there's a war on hand or in immediate prospect. Then he begins to shout and 'holler' at Him to attract His attention, because He is so far off from Germany."

Gard laughed. Then, after a moment, he asked, almost shyly,

"If German morals and religion have little necessary relation--little actual relation--how about love?"

"The German would never have known of love if he had not heard it talked of," replied Anderson with responsive geniality, pleased with Kirtley's amused face. "Generally an excess of a moral religion destroys love, just as the absence of it in the past has been apt to go with an indecent and widespread sensuality. So we have, what is called, the beastliness in the Teuton. For he has to go, as you know, to an extreme in things--logical extreme. This is why he is only partly human, from our standpoint. The human is so constructed that he can't stand excess in any direction very long and remain human. Everything has to be diluted, alloyed, temporized for him or it is not bearable--it will not work successfully.

"We see this in medicine--conspicuously. Medicines pure from the hands of Mother Nature are too strong, too rank in their purity, to be properly effective. They have to be weakened, reduced, compounded with inferior elements, to be of service. So with Truth. People are always begging for Truth, seeking the ultimate Truth, as if that would bring the perfect state of happiness. This is childlike ignorance. Truth in its pure, perfect condition would simply kill them--like unadulterated drugs. They could not stand its blinding light. They could not stand the shock. Like the rest--to change the metaphor--it has to be made up so largely of shoddy to wear well or wear at all.