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?