The poor little fellow was a pitiable object for some time. He not only suffered painfully from his bruises but had to meet the irate looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the feet on the earth.
Gard thought how differently an American father and mother would act. Their sons belonged to them and they would resent any outside interference that smacked of cruelty. In Germany, the boys, as already observed, belonged essentially to the Government. The vicious treatment of German children in the home, at school, in the army, accounts for the unique Teuton institution of child-suicide. The number of these boys and girls who, because of their hardships, destroy themselves in despair, is shockingly great. The statistics in other races offer little in comparison.
To break down the will by abasing youth before its comrades and elders, to lay its self-respect low, to beat dignified individuality into callous insensibility, manufactured a docile, automatic unit for the German mechanism. The peculiar strength of Deutschland lay in this early control and training of its young. And as the young surrendered their unimportant consciousness as individuals, they gained an important consciousness as factors in the State. For this reason, as they learned to be almost servile among their own folk, they became domineering among foreigners.
Villa Elsa now was true to the adage that misfortunes do not come or loom singly. One forenoon, about the middle of June, Kirtley was sitting in his attic, turning over in his mind the fact that his year in Germany would soon be up, and endeavoring to explain why he felt depressed. The recent events, it was true, had created a very unpleasant condition of mind, but his body itself also seemed to share in the inharmony. A dullness, a heaviness, had begun to weigh upon his physique and yet here were summer, Nature, the green earth, rejoicing all about him. It was odd. What was the full explanation?
As he sat there thinking somewhat dolefully about himself and forgetting his opened books, a loud knock was heard at his door. It was Frau Bucher with her knitting. She had never honored him with a call in his room. Something must be the matter.
At his invitation she came in and sank into a chair. Her face and hair were mussed. She was laboring under a great strain. The sons with their ill-luck had troubled her. The recent mishaps had evidently alarmed her, upset her, so that it was now the daughter filling the mother's anxious hours.
"Your daughter—Fräulein Elsa!" Gard exclaimed in astonishment.
"Yes, my poor daughter. Oh, good Herr Kirtley, you have always been so kind. I have treated you this winter like a son—just like my own sons."
"You have been very good to me, Frau Bucher," interpolated Kirtley, hastening to offer any consolation, although he could not imagine what distress had brought her to him.
"Well, my daughter—you know it has always been the intention that she marry Friedrich—ever since they were almost children. But, mein Gott, the poor Friedrich does not arrive at anything. We love him. All our friends love him—admire him. But he can get no fixed position. We wait, he waits, Elsa waits. Always hopes and more hopes and nothing comes. And he is so disappointed. No Kapellmeistership. Only small engagements which do not pay much and soon end. He has no money and what little we have to give with Elsa will not answer until he is permanently established.