Macray felt in his pocket. He drew out an evening paper, damp from the press, and folded to display:
COLONIALISM IN AMERICA
ENGLISH DICTATION
IMPRESSIONS OF GERMAN-AMERICAN BACK FROM
BELLIGERENT COUNTRIES
Napier stood at Mr. Taylor's side, and together they read how Miss von Schwarzenberg had not been an hour on this dear American soil, before she perceived with pain that, while Germany was fighting for freedom of the seas, for human rights, America was forgetting she'd ever won hers. After a genial reference in passing to the burning of Washington by the British, the lady protested that history wasn't her strong point. Would some one, therefore, kindly tell her who had given the seas to the British? Upon the eloquent pause that seemed to have followed that request, the lady illustrated the service Germany was rendering the United States in protesting against English domination. It must be very humiliating, the lady thought, for Americans to have their mail-bags opened, their letters confiscated. "Of course some of the letters are for Germany. Why not? Is England to tell you to whom you may write? Isn't America a neutral? Or is that a pretense?" She gave cases of bitter hardships, German parents, old, ill, dying, whom faithful sons had long been accustomed to supply with remittances from America. In suffering British interference, America, so Miss Greta told the interviewer, had failed in dignity. Weakly, supinely, slavishly, America was submitting to British insolence.
Nothing in the interview occasioned Napier so much concern as the fact that it was stated to have taken place at a named hotel, "where Miss von Schwarzenberg is staying with old friends."
Mr. Taylor laughed a trifle ruefully as he threw down the sticky paper and applied a pocket-handkerchief to his long, white fingers. "I like America, he assured the newcomer, but there's no denying it's a queer country and a queer people. Isn't it so, Macray?"
Macray's only answer was a faint groan. He picked up his newspaper and walked gloomily out.
"The very strangest mixture," Taylor went on, "of shrewdness and innocence. Take their attitude toward this woman. She impresses them enormously." He disregarded Napier's "She impresses most people." "Over here they take this Mrs. Guedalla, or Schwarz, or whatever her real name is—they take her not only for a woman of education, but a woman wohlgeboren. They accept her account of misuse of her name. An obscure Western actress who, you are told, bears a certain dubious likeness to the real Greta von Schwarzenberg had feloniously adopted that honorable name. 'You know the stage way,' says Schwarzenberg. 'Tottie Tompkins turns into Arabella Beauchamp.' The real Miss von Schwarzenberg has naturally never been on the stage. She is musical. All gebildete Germans are musical. And that fact had been her salvation, so she tells these fatuous friends of hers over here. Being musical in the thorough German way enabled her to hold out against her proud, despotic father. When he tried to compel her to marry the dissolute Freiherr of vast possessions, Miss Greta ran away with her governess. Oh, always the scene is carefully set! And then, in order not to live on the governess, Miss Greta took to teaching music. They swallow it all! They look upon her as a patriot. A German patriot, of course; but still laboring devotedly and legitimately for her native land."
What made Taylor's dealings with her a delicate matter was the fact that she had these powerful friends, Americans whose good faith and general decency of conduct no reasonable being could doubt. She had kept herself in close relations with these people even while she was abroad. His wife discovered that in Paris. How did Schwarzenberg keep up these useful relations? Through the one channel of organized participation in the war then open to American sympathizers, Relief.