The Court Ball
THE two sat the night out in the box. The reader is familiar with Thackeray's amusing references to the stuffy German Court balls. After his day and under the sway of the Empire, they had broadened and aired out somewhat in their automaton grandeurs.
Precisely at nine o'clock the Saxon Court entered, so far as possible in battle array, and unlimbered to a slight extent before their revering subjects. No one knew of anything this Royal family had ever said, commented Anderson. None of them had done anything original or brilliant except Louise, who had run off with the tutor. She could not stand the dullness here any longer. And the members of this Court represented civilization raised to the famous nth power!
How commonplace, uninspiring, they did look to Kirtley! As Germans can illy take on polish he thought he only beheld Rudolphs and Teklas jammed into court dress. The disenchantment of a medieval dynasty at near view!
After the midnight supper Anderson, refreshed, told of an illuminating book he might write on Germany with journalistic brevity and conciseness. It would run something like this:
Chapter on Gentlemen and Ladies.
There are few gentlemen and ladies in Germany.
Chapter on Manners.
There are no manners in Germany. Only orders and servility.
Chapter on Charm and Delicacy.
No specimens to be found.
Chapter on the Milk of Human Kindness.
There is no milk of human kindness in Germany.
Chapter on the Absence of Arrogance.
There is no absence of arrogance in Germany.
And so forth. What did Kirtley think of it?
The journalist jestingly identified the dignitaries, the men about town, the titled ladies about whose bulbous red shoulders often hung scandal, and retailed other gossip from his newspaper files. The scene indeed scintillated with lights and diamonds and crystal. Two orchestras answered each other in a continuous strain of conquering music. Swords and spurs clanked and clattered through the riotous German dances, adding their martial clangor to the regal sounds. Trains were stepped on, dresses torn. The retiring rooms were often sought for repairs. Now and again commotion was caused by some heavy person tripping on her skirts and crashing to the floor. It was Triumphant Germany celebrating her undisputed position and pride—celebrating her mastery of the universe.
Gard really longed at moments to be actively throbbing with it all, circling in the throng, and holding Elsa with her blond florescence in his arms. Then a certain contentment would possess him as he pictured her mother forced to stay home with blighted hankerings. What a ridiculous appearance he would have presented towing her around here in a waltz before all these florid and grandiose figures of state!
Kirtley's disposition was somewhat slow-going, sure-footed. He had a gentle or quiet conservative tenacity that so often comes with the inheritance of a moderate income. It at least gave him time to look things deliberately in the face.
He had at first discounted heavily his old friend's pyrotechnic, cynical bill of complaints against the Teutons and Teutonism. It was diverting, salient, but therefore discouraging to credence. Such judgments were apt to be flashes in the pan. They startled but lacked rootage. Gard had not sufficiently taken into consideration that the journalist was speaking at the end of seven years in Germany instead of at the beginning. When one arrives in a country, extreme snap-shot impressions readily flare forth in the mind.
Yet the more Kirtley saw, the more did he turn toward the same divorced mental attitude. He realized how truly the typical Villa Elsa, though in quite a different key, justified Anderson's conclusions. The performance Frau Bucher had gone through verified another variant in racial traits—a variant which Anderson had stressed.
Namely, one must be forcible, even harsh, with a German. He does not respond satisfactorily to kindness, leniency, liberality. Little sunny courtesies, unselfishnesses, genial endeavors, do not characteristically illuminate the tenebrous interior of his consciousness. He misinterprets them as feeblenesses, as confessions of his dominating rights and privileges. The more one grants to him, the more one yields to him, the more advantage and aggressive advantage he assumes he is invited to take. To go out of one's way to be obliging, to attempt to ingratiate one's self, brings difficulties.
But stout decision, sternness, defiant ultimatums, win out with him. As long as Gard had tried to make himself agreeable in the affair of the Court ball, his efforts were misunderstood and he became a handball buffeted about for the superior convenience of others. As soon as he finally stiffened up and mentally told them to go to perdition, the ingrowing troubles ceased with disciplined promptness. A satisfactory relation resulted, and a hearty respect for him in the household, he recognized, was measureably and contentedly increased.
It was a little different phase of the old pagan German tribal habit of considering the outsider as one from whom all should be got that was possible, irrespective of return in kind or a decent proportion of benefits. To hear in hard, to gouge, are toward the foreigner procedures relied on by the Teuton nature as appropriate. In it there is to be found little mutuality or respectfulness of feeling that curbs, not to speak of the social spirit that restrains or breeds a fine dignity of self. A show of weakness in any form, however ideal or beautiful, makes small appeal. So far as any other "tribe" is concerned, life to the German is at base a knock-down argument. Misfortunes in an alien land do not awaken sympathy. They are rather to be regarded as windfalls, as a result of which a profit is to be grabbed or a steely hand of control inserted where it does not belong.