Villa Elsa. Stuart Oliver Henry
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. Fräulein'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 Fräulein 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 Fräulein Elsa, it encountered unexpectedly an immense and yearning bosom in another quarter. Fräulein 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.