Villa Elsa. Stuart Oliver Henry
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
FRÄULEIN 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 Fräulein 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 Fräulein 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 mädchens 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 Fräulein 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 rôle 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 Fräulein 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