In the spring of 1911 von K—— cut short what was to have been a fortnight’s business trip to Germany to one of four days, the change in plan, as I have since learned, being due to an ‘invitation’ (an euphemism for a command) from the Kaiser to invest a huge sum of money in one of his armament concerns, great extensions in which were contemplated. Von K—— refused point-blank, rushed through his business, and took the first boat for New York. I did not see him until the following year, but friends told me that for a couple of months after his return to California he absolutely refused to talk of Germany or of German affairs even with his intimates.
This silence was dramatically broken in the smoking-room of the Union League Club, San Francisco, on the evening when the news came that the Kaiser had sent the gunboat ‘Panther’ to Agadir as a trump card for the game he was playing for the control of Morocco. Von K—— was frowning over his paper when an American friend came up, clapped him on the shoulder, and exclaimed: ‘The Baron is in close touch with the Kaiser; perhaps he can tell us what “The Mailed Fist” is punching at in North Africa.’
What von K—— said regarding the allegation that he was in close touch with the Kaiser was not stated in words that even the San Francisco papers (whose ‘news vultures’ had pounced upon the incident within an hour) felt able to report verbatim the following morning, but his ‘Mailed Fist’ mot went from California to Maine in the next twelve hours, and even to-day is still freely quoted whenever the question of the War Lord’s mentality is the subject of discussion.
‘Mailed vist!’ snorted the Baron, whose English has never climbed entirely out of his throat; ‘Vell, berhabst dey haas mailed his vist, but, by Gott, dey haas neffer mailed his prain.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Or maype, if dey haas mailed his prain, der bostmann haas forgodt it to deliffer.’
I saw Baron von K—— in San Francisco—encountered him beaming over the sculptures in the Italian Building at the Panama-Pacific Exposition—but was unable to draw him into any discussion of Germany and the war. He did, however, tell me that his German estates were for sale, that he never expected to return there again, and that—the day after Belgium was invaded—he had applied for his first papers of American citizenship.
THE TUTOR’S STORY.[1]
BY THE LATE CHARLES KINGSLEY,
REVISED AND COMPLETED BY HIS DAUGHTER, LUCAS MALET.
CHAPTER XXX.
That was the first of many days—for by both Braithwaite’s and Nellie’s request I stayed on at Westrea until nearly the end of the vacation—of sweet but very searching experience. If I played with fire it was a purifying fire surely, burning away the baser metal and leaving whatever of gold might be in me free of dross.
Not that I say this boastfully—who am I, indeed, to boast?—but humbly and thankfully, knowing I passed through an ordeal from which—while the animal man cowered and shrank, crying aloud, aye, and with tears of agony, to be spared—the spiritual man drew strength and rose, in God’s mercy, to greater fulness of life. For I learned very much, and that at first hand, by personal experiment, not by hearsay merely or, parrot-like, by rote. Learned the truth of the apostle’s dictum, that although ‘all things are lawful,’ yet, for some of us, many things, however good in themselves or good for others, are ‘not expedient.’ Learned, too, the value of the second best, learned to accept the lower place. Learned to rejoice in friendship, since the greater joys of love were denied me, schooling myself to play a brother’s part; play it fearlessly and, as I trust, unselfishly, watchful that neither by word, or deed, or even by look, I overstepped the limit I had set myself and forfeited the trust and faith Nellie reposed in me.