Winter and Spring
THE sudden drop in the life in Villa Elsa occasioned by meteoric Jim Deming's disappearance, was terrific. Frau Bucher gasped, caught her breath and sank voluminously beneath the waters of social oblivion whence she had so grandly emerged. When she finally came up to her plain surface of existence she demanded, Where are now the theater parties, and drives in the Grosse Garten behind the King? The family had almost begun to wonder how they had got on before. She wailed:
"The good Herr Deming, the marvelous Herr Deming! How could he have abruptly left us? Something mightily strange must have forced him to go. He will surely return. How could he treat Elsa so? Here we are with our hopes, our plans and our new underwear. It is terrible."
For several days the house resounded with perturbation. This gradually decreased as the readjustment to the former flat conditions took place. The transition was not completed until the information arrived that Herr Deming was never coming back. The final stroke. It was indeed pitiable, tragic, amusing. And all because the American custom of flirtation was unknown to these matter-of-fact Germans, so deadly in earnest about everything.
But, Teuton-like, the brave ship Villa Elsa soon righted itself, being used to blows. It had at least entertained and been entertained by one of the Golden Youths of Good Fortune whose legends gild the expectations of every race. And it was a superior satisfaction to realize that this had not happened elsewhere in Loschwitz.
There were left behind no lingering animosities, no painful grievings. Feelings were too stout, sensibilities too tough, to admit of acknowledging rancors or sickly complaints. The daughter's marriageable future was apparently faced again with courageous determination. As she could not be a luxurious American queen, she must be a German housewife who ranked, to say the least, high enough in the eyes of Gott. But what German's wife? Oddly enough Frau Bucher, despite all her bluntness, never let a hint out of the bag of her franknesses before Kirtley.
After Jim Deming's second riotous invasion of Villa Elsa, when there had been confirmed the abject and tumultuous surrender of the two ladies, mind, body and soul, to mere money, prostrate at the feet of an American "pig," Gard experienced a numbness of heart. True, the daughter was tied to the apron strings of her mother. But then Jim could only fling his pocketbook in her face. He had done it and she, sheep-like, had obviously accepted the situation without a question, a murmur.
How could he, as an American, gage such a blank lack of character, individuality? How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from other peoples. The highest ideal of German character is expressed by works. The highest ideal of "Christian" character is expressed by self.
Spring was now at hand. The sunlit air invited to the out-door life. The windows and doors of Villa Elsa, which was stale and stuffy from the closed-up winter, stood open and the inmates came out of their hibernation, shook themselves and welcomed the warmth and lack-luster brightness. The lindens and plane trees and shrubberies began to hug the place under their cosy leafage. Herr Bucher's rose garden was prepared to grow merry with colors. The companionable garden corner for afternoon tea and beer became a nook of liveliness. The oncoming summer sent forth generally its exulting thrills.
This fine surging-in of sunny, revivifying Nature took at first such a strong and glad hold on Gard that his private emotions, which Elsa had so promptly sharpened and whose edge had become dulled, seemed to lay themselves pleasantly aside for the moment. Whether they were to become whetted again into keen interest remained to be seen, for the awakening green and white noon-tide of actual existence was absorbing.
Apparently she was not greatly affected by Deming's departure. She betook herself to her lessons and duties with well-drilled diligence. The years were cut out for her. She had only to follow the pattern. How much more fortunate it would be, Gard had often felt, if she were detached from her semi-civilized household! Her own attractions would then be freed from the surrounding thorns, prickly hedges, that bruised and tore and dismayed one. An American chap could marry her—but oh, her family!
It was not long, however, before she missed meals. She had begun again being mysteriously mute at times in her room, over the Heine poems. Gard had almost forgotten them.
There were no promenades this early season in the meadow, with the poet. No duos were played. Winter, for that matter, was a more favorable time for them, as it was also for the family concerts.
Fräulein observed a meaningless familiarity with Kirtley as if he were an old member of the home circle. He wondered again if Rudolph had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer unjustified Satanism?
The spring weather somewhat curtailed, mollified, all the frank irascibility and wrangling that went on in the house, and it was under the lukewarm spell of this German virgin summer-time that the routine took on its most agreeable aspects, though accompanied with the usual Teuton domestic din. It was, in fact, very enjoyable, contrasted with what the cold months had permitted.
In the winter a pleasant feature had been the theater or opera nights. Darkness then came at four. Dinner would be served at five in order to reach the amusement place at half past six or seven. By eleven the family were back in Loschwitz, sitting down, starved, to a bouncing supper where frequently Kirtley regaled himself with the toothsome Pumpernickel. Over the hot dishes the feverish points of the entertainment were discussed, exclaimed about, while the party cooled off and solaced themselves with Schultheiss. These were rousing and satisfying little happenings.
Free public lectures had also been a source of enjoyment to the Buchers during the long frigid fortnights. Of the five senses, Gard reflected, hearing is the only good one the Germans possess. They hear, absorb through hearing, to better advantage than other races. They close their eyes and drink in seriously. Naturally enough comes about the universality of their music and lectures.
Of these public dissertations a course on the Union between Greek Philosophy and Greek Poetry was especially raved over in Villa Elsa. Gard attended one of these evenings, inspired by the instructional ardors of Frau and Fräulein and Ernst. The example of little Ernst, avid of such intellectual pleasures at his tender age, ever impressed Gard anew. He thought of American lads in comparison.
The German professor, as is well known, occupies a much more potent and exalted position in Germany than the American professor in America. He is considered a reliable fount of wisdom. He speaks with sure authority. He is an oracle, permanent and sounding afar.
On this occasion, precisely at eight o'clock, in a majestic university hall, Kirtley saw this particular grand and popular orator ascend the pulpit. He was in full dress—white waistcoat, white tie, white kids. He was large, shapely, commanding. The women were "at his feet." He stood there solemnly as the clock was striking, and slowly removed his gloves and inserted them under his coat tail. And for exactly an hour there was a remarkable flow of formidable, finished periods, without a note, without a hesitation. Gard really felt there would never be anything else to say about Beauty, so profound, so complete, so final, seemed this survey of the topic.
At the close the audience flocked to the speaker as if to an Olympian victor. Frau Bucher was ecstatic, covering him with her compliments while insisting on waiting for a propitious moment to introduce Herr Kirtley. But as Gard remained there at the lecturer's elbow, he met with another disillusion about German professors. This locally famous man, so correctly dressed to outward view, wore no shirt collar under his beard. His neck and ears showed no signs of recent ablutions and were bushy with unkempt hairs. And he exhaled a rank odor compounded of perspiration and dirt.
Gard almost choked, being crowded into close contact. Could he ever get fully accustomed to German smells? It was most unpleasant, disenchanting. He could not, it appeared, find himself attracted to Teuton university expounders—those gods of wisdom who had repulsed him.
Whether it was his unfortunate luck or not, he was not able to summon a desire to go again. He had not forgotten his other experience. It was a part of that something fundamentally, monumentally lacking in the German race—something shoddy, deceptive, which he had met with at so many turns.