"But what do you want me to do? Frau Bucher?"

"We all love America, Herr Kirtley!" she burst out. "Elsa loves America. Ever since that splendid Herr Deming came, we love America. And we feel we can trust you. Young men ought to marry early. Elsa wants a decent husband and a decent little home. That is not much to ask. Of course we would hate to have her go so far away. But you have always been so kind to her. You have shown such interest in her. And what a good girl Elsa is! We have brought her up so carefully—and to be a good wife. She can cook and sew and keep house. She can play and paint, and also sing a little. She is strong, never sick, and can work—work. All you Americans have money. We Germans are poor. We can't give her much for a dowry. Excuse me, Herr Kirtley, but you see I came naturally to you. Who else is there? We have made a son of you this winter." Then Frau Bucher almost shrieked out:

"And you can stay here always, if you prefer that!"

Full of her brave endeavor the mother bolted through the door without any ceremony of leave-taking.

Gard could not collect his tumultuous thoughts there in the room. At last the whole secret was out. Had she not foresightedly kept it so long with some such purpose in view?

Fresh air was the only place for him. He grabbed his hat to escape other fateful contingencies that morning, and made for the pine park where it was silent and cool. He walked hastily, with his hat off, along the path where Elsa and he used to stroll while conning together the passionate lyrics of the passionate Heine.



CHAPTER XXXIII

A WAITRESS DANCE

He went on and on through the firs and hemlocks, on the right bank of the Elbe, then down toward the city. A multitude of convictions, reflections, impressions, flocked in his brain. After awhile he seemed to send them all scattering by exclaiming, "I'll be damned!"

They turbulently regathered. There was the sensual ape Von Tielitz—they would marry her to him. She could love him, polluted and swinish in the low sinks of womankind. There was the flatulent Jim Deming with his money—she could quickly marry him. And at last the ideals Gard had nourished about her had finally tumbled to the ground that day in her mother's crude offer of bargain and sale.

These Germans! They were outside the pale. They were the midway people between barbaric Asia and the civilized West. America, millions, pigs, morals, love, brutality, erudition, proficiency, obscenity—the Teuton race mixed them all up hopelessly, without rime or reason.

Gard walked and walked without realizing he was becoming tired. As he neared the city he burst out again with, "I'll be damned!" It was all the resume he could arrive at. He found himself finally hungry and made his way to Fritzi's little inn. He felt almost beaten out. Was he really well?

The middle of the afternoon had come. There she was fresh, free, like a hardy wild flower. She trotted back and forth, curtseying, chattering, with her merry heels clicking on the tiling. The hot sausages and Lebkuchen and a stein were hastened in, and she switched her short skirts down cosily on a bench in front of him to knit and look out after his needs. He had encouraged such opportunities for the practice of conversation.

"I've been looking for you to come in," she lisped.

"Why?"

"I wanted to ask you to buy a ticket for our Waitress Dance, and I did not know at all where you lived." It was a long sentence for her and she giggled.

"Number 5, Wiesenstrasse, Loschwitz."

"Gott im Himmel! That's way off."

"When is your dance?"

"It's to-night. And it's only twelve marks." She fumbled out a ticket from beneath her white apron with a maid's agitation.

"I'll take it," said Gard.

"But you have to promise to go. They want every ticket holder to go."

"Are you going?"

"Of course I'm going. It's all us waitresses. And it's only once a year. The waiters have theirs twice a year."

"And are you going to dance?"

"Of course I'm going to dance. I always dance." She perked up her head with her young red mouth open in almost childish puzzlement, as much as to say, "Why, what are balls for?"

Gard looked down on his fattening supply of smoking sausages and honey cakes. A servants' ball might be just the thing to cure his disgust with Loschwitz—with himself—with everything. He had heard Friedrich, Messer and Jim Deming exclaim enthusiastically about these popular fetes. They should not, it appeared, be missed if one wanted to see the real German nature let loose.

"Well, if you're going to dance, I'll go," he promised.

"You bet your life I'm going to dance!" Fritzi cried out in the Saxon dialect's equivalent as she sprang up, and wheeled off to wait on a new visitor. When she had served him she sidled back to Gard's table with a doubting, half-disappointed air.

"You're fooling me." She stuck her tongue out on her upper lip in peasant bashfulness.

"No, I'll be there as sure as I'm now paying for the ticket." He filled her fat hand with the coins which it could hardly hold. She went away happy.

The ball did not begin until ten, to give the young ladies time to finish their dining-room duties and dress. Kirtley went to a cafe and watched the billiards until after dark, then slipped out to Villa Elsa, jumped into his evening clothes, and slipped away again. He had seen the royalty dance. Now he would see the common people. This bustling about was cheering. He was glad to go.

The ball room was big, barn-like, with green branches and cheap flowers strung about. Aprons, napkins, table cloths, bills of fare, and other insignia of the waitress profession filled in the local color of the decorations on the walls. There was not one of the everlasting Verbotens to be seen. Alcoves containing tables and chairs ranged around.

The entertainment was in full fling when Gard arrived. As the night was warm the doors and windows were open wide, and fully as many people seemed outside as inside. The throng included a number of students. The dancing was everywhere—on the grass, in the doorways, in the dressing rooms, on the stage by the orchestra. How free and easy compared with the Court affair!

Kirtley took refuge in an alcove. He fancied he would before long spy Fritzi. She would be the only person he knew. But she discovered him first. She tripped up to him with a green cavalier redolent of salad oil and beer. She was very proud to be able to claim Herr Kirtley for one of her "sales." Foreigners are always distinguished. The music struck up again and off she was whisked without saying Aufwiedersehen.

She next came up hanging on to the arms of two dancers. More introductions. All were getting sweaty and thirsty. Gard invited them to sit and he provided Schultheiss.

Fritzi soon settled upon this spot as headquarters, twirling off into the figures and returning with different companions. She brought a girl whom she wanted specially to meet the Herr. The girls dived into the alcove, then out, back again, and hung about flustered, by turns bold or backward. They did not know whether it was proper to see that he danced. He was, of course, high above their class, but if he didn't wish to dance, why had he come? Fritzi wanted to be polite but the situation was above her etiquette. He had been so kind as to buy a ticket, and how could he have a good time without joining in the festivities? The girls nudged each other, balked and snickered.

Gard saw Fritzi's awkward restraint and set her at rest by saying:

"I can't dance the German way."

"The German way?" she echoed bluntly. "Why, I thought everybody in the world danced alike."

"We don't whirl round and round as you do," Gard explained.

"Well, I'll swear!" she clucked incredulously, her tongue in her cheek as if saying, "What sort of dancing can that be!"

The dust and streams of perspiration began to affect everyone, but the music and revolving exertions grew more rapid and vigorous as the hours advanced. Beetles and bugs sailed through the air along with the familiar German odors that greeted Kirtley's nostrils. Everyone became freer. Enjoyment ran higher. Men shed their coats and women made themselves equally comfortable. It was beer, beer, beer.

When Fritzi had seen that her Herr was not to take part, she began to behave toward him with a more bluff unconventionality. She made him acquainted with all her partners and girl friends. She confided to him the little jingling trinkets she wore. Her face ablaze, her hair tousled, her feet keeping on the floor with difficulty, she looked to Gard like a flaming maenad. She had come in cheap satin, and also in silk hose which she particularly doted on. But like all thrifty German maids, after two or three dances she divested herself of these and put on stouter stuffs which she had brought along and which could stand the wear and tear. The possession of those finer things had first to be shown to gratify vanity. Then recourse was had to a practical basis for physical pleasure.

Gard mused over the seething picture before him. He knew it had been pointed out that while the Germans are lewd, they are not dissolute. They do not let their duties suffer. Their ample physiques can stand hard strains, and a night of revelry is followed next day by a prompt resumption of tasks. These young folk, tearing about like disheveled satyrs and nymphs, would be at their jobs in the morning.

The Teuton does not waste his patrimony in riotous living or lead a lawless existence. To this extent the influence of the Government, in its way, was felt. While it recognized that the forceful animal spirits of its people must be indulged to keep them contentedly in control, it set its face against waste of time and of belongings in any prolonged habits of dissipation. Thus the strength and material resources, the plodding industry and economy, of the race were conserved as well as energized.

As for the German women, they are not naturally passionate in the ordinary emotional and imaginative acceptation of this word. Their passions are not extended by any radical complications of romance or ideality. In a sense, they keep their heads in any indulgence.



CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAMPAGNE

At midnight Kirtley saw a remarkable sight. On the stroke of twelve, loud toasts to Der Tag were suddenly lifted high in air as the orchestra broke forth with the Wacht am Rhein. An uproar seized the assembly. "Gott scourge England! Down with France! Deutschland ueber Alles!" In a twinkling it was a crowd mad for war. Beer mugs were smashed, various objects of apparel were flung far and wide. Improvised orators—students—mounted tables and began crying for vengeance on the world in speeches which, in the hubbub, did not get much beyond preliminary exclamations.

Hatred of Great Britain stood out above it all. How long must the Fatherland be held in check? "Der Kaiser! Hoch der Kaiser!" The popular national frenzy had in this spot ripped off any bounds. Burn, sack, violate, kill—Gard heard the intimations—the threats—of all such frightfulness. In the furor he stood up on his table to get a better view of the extraordinary demonstration. It sounded fateful, terrible, like descriptions recited of the French Revolution. He was almost awestruck. At its height he feared personal violence for himself. He had sometimes been taken for a Britisher.

Anderson was right again. The Teutons lusted for war now. What a spectacle! The old, old German hate. This very lowly class of people—waiters and waitresses—had nothing, would be the very first to face severe hardships, and the men would suffer more than any at the front. They would all be mainly the ones to go hungry, be cold, be killed. But here appeared the cannon fodder demanding to be shot down in its craze for Triumphant Germany. It was hoarse for Victory or Destruction. It was drunk with its physical power. These soldiers were angrily impatient to be let loose like hellhounds, from the sullen fastnesses of mountains and swamps behind the Rhine, upon the Christian populations beyond in the great plains of civilization.

When the tempest had passed and its activities were dwindling into the renewed whirlwinds of the dance, Gard resumed his seat, his head beginning to swim a little. At last his doubting eyes were as if unsealed. A Vandal tribe, a great and powerful Vandal tribe, still lived in the world. It was feeding on Conflict—the food of its ancient bellicose gods.

How was it, indeed, that our trained American observers, men who had been educated in Germany and those who had not, never saw anything of this danger that was boiling in the breasts of even the humblest classes of Teutons? Yes, Anderson was correct. The Germans were, after all, frank enough about it. All was spontaneous and bold. Egged on by their military, political, educational, religious masters, the populace could easily, at any time, work themselves up like this into a frantic state about conquest. And yet Americans heard nothing of it. It was as if their channels of information were subsidized under German authority.

At one o'clock supper time came and Gard ordered. There were Fritzi and another girl and two young men—all very profuse in their appreciation of his hospitality. The popping of a few bottles of cheap champagne sounded in his ears. He was in the swing of the excitement and could not be outdone. His brand was French, of a fine quality. It exhilarated his brain far above the plain, distorted commonplaces of Loschwitz.

After supper the real frolic set in. The true devotees now alone remained. They began doing fancy twists, with legs out far and wide. Vests came off, with collars and ties, and feminine charms became as familiar as an old story that is read too often to have much meaning for the senses. To Gard it all now appeared seemly enough, like an opera peasant ballet whose frank rusticities were excused under the inspiration of the music.

Fritzi's hair floated loosely over her shoulders. It looked to him even brighter than Elsa's. Her snug, many-colored bodice became partly unlaced and she had kicked off her tight slippers under Gard's table. In their heated condition many of the other waitresses were dancing in their unshod feet. He thought it very natural and pleasing when Fritzi rushed up with her heirloom of silk stockings which she had removed early in the evening. They had been her grandmother's who had worn them at some grand baron's wedding long ago—the sole tradition and distinction connected with Fritzi's lineage. One of her friends had been robbed in the dressing room and she was afraid to trust these precious articles there longer. She made sure that Gard had tucked them in his pocket for safekeeping. As she hurried to rejoin the circles, he saw that she had worn through the bottoms of her dancing hose.

Whenever that feeling of discomfort, which he had been conscious of early that morning, surged for a moment through him, a sip of champagne brought quick relief and gilded the scene and his spirits with its necromancy. He felt dizzy but blissful. He became drowsy.... He had sunk into a dream, glorious then ugly, foolish but haunting.

He dreamed he was an armored knight of the time of Charlemagne. He was astride a steed caparisoned for battle, and was riding southward from the Alps in the blazing sunlight, along a white road amid what he supposed were the gardened plains of Lombardy. By his side, in similar array, rode a lovely blond princess of the North with a wonderful luxuriance of hair—some daughter of the Frankish race of fierce and resplendent Brunnhildas or Fredegondas.

She at last became wearied of her heavy armor, the length of the journey and the burning sun. He assisted in extricating her from her coat of mail, and took her over into his arms asleep, letting her armor ride upright on her charger save for the helmet which he fastened to his pommel. As the horses kept onward he held with delight her lightsome body, with her miraculous tresses entwining him as she slumbered. He held her embraced in tenderness, for had not she—a princess—trusted him and gone away with him alone?

He had not thus ridden with her far, before his eyes, alert in every direction for the treacherous enemies of the land, beheld with gaping fright an immense black serpent, brilliant with scales glistening in the scintillating air, slowly uncoiling out of her headless panoply that was still riding bolt upright by his side. He glared down at her in the certainty that she had turned into a twin serpent at his breast. She lay there still in the seductive form of a woman. But she had turned loathsome to his touch. He hurled her to the ground and the next moment was flying on foot, afield, in horror from the spot.

And he recalled in his dream how woman and the snake have been allied in legend, religion and history—how they have ever been identified in the minds of men. His beautiful queen had been at one with the serpent in that suit of metal. Or was it only Elsa?—was it only Fritzi?—with their amber hair?

For what seemed a very long time he was fitfully trying to decide—when he slowly made out that brawny Frau Bucher stood over him.



CHAPTER XXXV

RECUPERATION

She was in the act of giving him a potion for a raging fever. Once he realized that Herr Bucher sat silently poring over a book by the bed, chucking him back into it when he tossed out. The Bucher children occasionally appeared on errands for his comfort. The family nursed him more diligently than if he had been their own.

Gard came back to his senses rather rapidly. He had found himself in his room. He was in his own bed—that German bed. Summertide was steadily flooding in through the grateful leaves of his linden, and brightening his confining walls. His narrow-gage American digestive apparatus had, it appeared, finally rebelled over the broad German fare. All his eating and drinking during the months had proven disastrous. When he had begun to feel bad that last day, it only needed a little champagne to bring to a head the inevitable revolt. And so, toward the end of his year, he was physically not far from where he had been on coming to Deutschland for the sake of its inspiring virilities.

He had plenty of time to wonder how he had got back to Loschwitz from the Waitress Dance. He never inquired, never learned. But Fritzi alone knew his address. He had no recollection of anything. He went through his pockets. His valuables were intact. His money was all there as nearly as he could figure out, except a reasonable amount evidently used to pay the supper bill and convey him home. Truly those considerate servants had not acted like amateurs.

He finally remembered about Fritzi's hose. They were gone. At length Frau Bucher said she had forgotten to tell him that a pretty young woman came to reclaim them. He was ashamed enough. To be carried to his room in the odor of champagne and with a girl's silk stockings in his pocket! He—Gard Kirtley! Was this the low estate to which German life had brought him?

But he soon observed that the Buchers cared nothing about all this. Young men, as we have seen, were expected to go on larks. No one spoke of the distressing occurrence. There was no disagreeable testimony that he had made great trouble. No looks of reproach attacked him. His Puritan habits had been, in fact, very curious to the parents. They felt now that he was a youth whom they could understand. He was true to the proper type.

It was a relief for him to know that he had not dropped in respect before any of the household. He believed he had, on the contrary, grown in their estimation, as had Rudi after his "experience." The poor Herr Kirtley was considered a much abused victim of an unfortunate sickness. Once Frau exclaimed:

"Ach Himmel! our sons have such a hard time of it!"

When he began to eat ravenously after his enforced abstinence, hearty foods and heavy drinks were supplied. It is the German fashion at such times to build up the strength quickly with lusty meals. He was started promptly again on the road to gastric ruin.

Often at night a cold sweat would bead over Gard. What would he do about Frau Bucher and Elsa? He had been thrown helpless into their hands. Holy Smoke! Would he become a German in spite of himself? He sometimes wished the Imperial Secret Service might scare him out of the country as had been the case with the lucky Deming.

The Buchers had likely saved his life. He had been brought by them faithfully back to health. How was he going to repay? What excuses could he offer when the time came to face Frau's proposal? How could he possibly make his escape at all agreeably? Was ever a fellow in just such a pickle?

And here was the ever-capable Elsa dutifully bringing his viands and at times reading to him stories from Hoffmann. She was like a real fairy out of a German story book. The new Heine she had given him lay there, but neither suggested opening it. It was not a thing to get well over.

To a sick man, his nurse seems heavenly. And Elsa looked truly golden as she sat there over the Hoffmann, with the sunlight streaming about her head. In Gard's phantasmagoria at night there had often been a blond maiden, dancing and lovely—but mingled at length into some unpleasant circumstance like that connected with the phantom princess he had ridden with in Italy.

Ernst, still limping from his beating, came in now and then and read out of a ponderous volume on the Relation of German Music to the Reformation. It was full of intricate, plodding, dull detail in the German style, which the lad found of interest. But Gard, despite this kindness, could not make much headway with it. Smoking was, of course, permitted to accompany his man-like return to health, and it was always a genial hour to have Anderson sitting there in the wreaths of nicotine before the summery window, talking, talking.

The correspondent came several times, bringing comic papers. Gard pleased him by saying he was veering round to the journalist's way of thinking on things German. He related the Der Tag incident at the ball. The family life of the Teutons, the life of the plain people—all were substantiating the essential and alarming truth of the old man's beliefs. At last another American in Germany had been found who was experiencing an awakening. The result was a mutual appreciation.

One afternoon they were eating some of the big German cherries, and the fragrance of Herr Bucher's rose garden below was engaged in balmy conflict with the odors of cigars.

"Well, what is the solution about the German people?" Gard propounded. "What's to be done with them? Here they are, industrious as bees and as fully armed with stings. Will a war cure anything? Even if defeated, won't they be the same people? Won't they present the same problem? Won't they present the same menace to what we consider as the best and most desirable types of civilization?"

Anderson did not interrupt these questions. When they had all come out, he gravely took another cigar, leisurely lighted it and turned his chair to face the linden at the window. He spoke very mildly.



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE GERMAN PROBLEM. AN ANSWER

"I have given this a great deal of thought. I have read a great deal and I believe I have never known of a writer who furnished what I should call an answer. And that is the most important thing—the vital thing. So I have evolved a simple, natural proposal. It is the only proposal, I think, that will remedy the evil of the German nation—remedy the ugly situation that hangs over the careless earth.

"We know that when young foreigners are educated in considerable part in a country, they generally become at peace with it. Everything, in fact, draws them to this attitude—for instance, their excusable satisfaction in feeling that their sojourn abroad has been a success for them instead of a failure. Any foreign instruction makes the student more of an intelligent, cosmopolitan sympathizer. It knits together warm acquaintances abroad. Every Rhodes scholar is an ally of England. He goes forth bearing kindly messages for her. I have told you how it works with our Americans coming over here to the German universities. They nearly all become pro-Germanic. And this is one reason why our compatriots at home have in general such a downright admiration for what they consider the super-excellence of the Teutons.

"But while this providing of the German education for Americans is pulling so strong in favor of Germany, we have nothing similar in America pulling Germany toward us and our ways. Young Germans are not sent to the United States to study and to lead our lives and to return home bearing good-will and good reports. They stay where they are and become more narrowly, intrinsically Teutons—irreclaimably Teutons. They are left with the undisputed idea that their system of instruction is altogether the best, as proven by the spectacle of aliens coming here for schooling. Why, then, should German lads and misses go abroad to learn? And they don't.

"Now as long as this state of things continues, the German race will remain a tribe in itself, and radically at loggerheads with the world. It will be hopelessly separated, unreconciled, inimical. It will be strange and opposed to everyone else—everything else. As you have seen yourself, even the meanings of the most common and essential terms are usually, to the German, the contrary of what they are to the rest of mankind.

"How will there ever be any natural and genuine meeting of the minds, fellowship, community of interests, under present programmes? For centuries civilized countries have been living side by side with the Teutons, have been pursuing education ever more zealously, and still the German brain and character stay profoundly different from the rest and are not understood. They are so different, in fact, that the forces of war and destruction must be maintained as against them and are constant irritants to thought and activity.

"My plan is this. Young German men and women should be amicably educated abroad in very large numbers—the largest well possible. And on a broader basis than the Cecil Rhodes scheme. In our country they would become, from youthful association, more or less fond of our open homes, our sense of democracy, the untrammeled opportunities to go and to do. They would see the advantages of these blessings—or at least their human attraction—among boys and girls.

"Under my programme these Germans, still adolescent, will return home and a little of this foreign education will stick. But their children will do the same. More will stick with them. Then their children, and still more sticking. After fifty or a hundred years you will have a large population in Deutschland thinking and liking and to a great extent living like their Christian and less warlike neighbors. It will be a tremendous beneficial element introduced for the first time into Germany. It will slowly and silently, without friction or loss of self-respect, accomplish an internal revolution.

"Foreign education for Teuton boys and girls! That's the only final answer I can find—the only true one. You see, a war will never accomplish this, nor tariffs or penalties. Such agencies do not change human nature or character or modes of existence. They antagonize, make stubborn or resentful or malevolent. And, unlike other races, the Germans would always remain, as they are to-day, UNITED. This is the explanation of their World Power."

Anderson stopped as if waiting for a comment.

"It all sounds well and is a beautiful way to do it, but how is it practicable?" asked Gard, who had listened attentively, impressed. "How are you going to coax the Germans to enter into this? What benefit will they see in it?"

"You are right," returned Anderson. "That's the difficulty at present. It can't be put in operation, as I see it, unless Germany happens to be defeated in the coming war. If she is defeated she will, of course, be humbled and temporarily sick of fighting, and this proposal could then be readily forced into adoption as one of the post-war measures looking to the quickest rehabilitation of the nation. Anything that will put it on its feet again soon will be most welcome at that time. Meanwhile, the instruments of war, the power to do damage, must not be left in the German's hands. As long as he has them, he will prepare to destroy."

"But if Germany is victorious, as you seem to think she will be?" suggested Gard.

"Oh, then nothing will work. It won't have a chance. What will there be of all this to contemplate? Germany will be the master and its semi-paganism will prevail. The modern Teuton tribes will begin to level the Christian civilizations to the ground just as the Huns leveled the Roman civilization. The Hun disposition in the German must be eradicated—must be destroyed. Until this is done the world will always have these Huns at its gates."...

* * * * *

It was now July in the year of everlasting tragedy—1914. Kirtley must leave for home, as Villa Elsa knew. He talked over his route with Anderson. His interest in Charlemagne made him wish to see at Aix-la-Chapelle the great emperor's tomb, underneath which, according to an old-time legend, the ruler still sits in his white robes of state in his marble chair, looking forward to resurrection to power. So the trip was mapped out through central Germany.

As the time was at hand for Gard to announce his date of setting off, his perplexities before Frau and Elsa grew entangled. But, happily, their knot was cut for him. Von Tielitz, who had long been away, broke in upon the household one morning with glorious news. He had received a commission as bandmaster in the army with fair pay. Most unexpected. A civilian, who could make sport of the military, summoned into the ranks! What could it mean? Something must be in the wind.

At all events he had come to arrange to marry Elsa, and converted the Villa into a hubbub. He was so beside himself that he appeared ready to embrace and marry the first person he met. He was also officious as if conducting a rehearsal. He rushed to Gard's room and overwhelmed him with the tidings. His eye-glasses kept tumbling off. He was upstairs and down, in the flower garden, out at the tea table, and now and then he rushed to the Pleyel and rent the air with its exultant chords.

The family turned the day into celebration. The wine cellar was opened. The kitchen sent forth its hot and overflowing dishes hour after hour until well into the evening. The marriageable Jim Deming and Gard Kirtley were to Villa Elsa as if they had never been. Frau proclaimed in husky sounds that she had not felt so young in thirty years. Luckily Fraeulein Wasserhaus had gone off to Brunswick to visit a relative soon after Deming's advent, so she was not in Wiesenstrasse to encounter this joyous climax and Gard's preparations for his eventful journey.

Elsa acted as one overjoyed. It was what she had yearned for and what filled the measure of her Teutonic maiden nature. On seeing her happy like a yellow mermaid on a sunlit, blissful shore, and knowing what Friedrich was with all his talent, Gard realized she was never for him or he for her. It had been for him a vagary, an irresponsible venture in ethno-psychology, a poorly based confusion of appreciation with a vague notion of duty intermingled with sentiment.

His illness had cleared his intuitions. The unalluring defects of the Teuton systems of love-making overshadowed his own defects as a suitor. Elsa had been as truly foreign to him as the German habits of eating and drinking. In thinking of her he now knew he had always been conscious of her nation. The German woman, as he had already learned, is sunk into her race. It swallows up her individuality. In marrying her, one married the whole people—the German State—the Kaiser. One became possessed not only of a help-meet but of an aggressive political idea.

Now that Gard was a friend instead of a lover, how much easier were his relations with Fraeulein! Brooding sensitiveness and responsibility passed into lightsomeness. The unnatural and crankling proceeding of his trying to woo a German girl was smoothed away into a genial indifference. The mental picture of Elsa would remain as one that had attracted him on the wall of his German memories. And like the hundred maids that a youth is smitten with, she would gradually blend into the dim gallery of such pleasant visions of Kirtley's susceptible spring-time—visions which, in all men, fade sweetly into their manhood.

In this manner the cloud of Gard's awkward discomfort in speaking out or acting out his answer to Frau's virile project, had melted away before these lighted-up faces. He felt as if a fog were lifted off his consciousness. He was glad to slip out thus easily. In the lively jumble of robust, rejoicing realities about him, he seemed to have emerged from the fringy edges of a daze.



CHAPTER XXXVII

A GERMAN "GOTT BE WITH YE"

A dash of adventure was to crown Gard Kirtley's farewell to Germany as it had crowned Jim Deming's, but with an ominous wreath of the tragic instead of garlands of the comic. War was at hand, yet even Anderson did not see it plainly enough to report it. War was often in the sky in Germany and often had he been fooled. The Teutons must be sure of victory and, he was positive, would avail themselves of a long summer for their campaign.

In those days of July something peculiar and tense hung over the land, but its sources were untraceable, its form, abstract. The unadvised, ordinary people wiped the sweat from their foreheads and said it must be the heat. Kirtley would not have been expected to interpret Friedrich's surprising engagement in the music ranks of the Landwehr as a sign that widespread preparations were being made for the fullest onslaught of which the nation could be capable. The Government was, nevertheless, quietly laying its hands on all its young men—even musicians who were blind in one eye and could not see out of it.

Gard was glad to go home through the heart of Germany. Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Eisenach!—the land of Goethe, Schiller, Luther. While these figures were discarded from the blatant pageantry of the armed Empire, the landmarks associated with them remained to satisfy the vision, and he could tell of them to dear old ignorant Rebner who would be waiting to hear of his beloved Deutschland which existed no more. Afterward, Heidelberg; the trip down the Rhine to the spires of Cologne; and then Aix at the western border, where that august sovereign slept in a haunting majesty, wrapped in the mystic grandeur of the Dark Ages. It was the most fitting and impressive place on the frontier from which to bid adieu to Germania.

In gratitude for his recovery Gard made handsome presents to everyone at Loschwitz, accompanied by the conventional Edelweiss. Villa Elsa, in turn, was profuse in its expressions and little acts of good will. Herr Bucher gave him a queer pipe, and the boys furnished the smoking tobacco. These gifts were to while away the lost hours on the tour. From Frau came a flask of cognac for use in case he were dizzy on the trains. Fraeulein bestowed on him one of her tiny etchings showing the Elbe with the Schiller Garden where all had spent so many evenings.

Gard's route, his through ticket to the sea, his traveling clothing, were subjects of daily conversation at the table. Although the family were entirely obliging, Rudi, odd to say, occupied himself the most about the trip. He seemed wonderfully keyed up and more full of military talk even than usual. He insisted on seeing about time-tables, hotels to be recommended, the favorite dishes and brews to be called for at each stopping place for local tone.

Kirtley was pleased over his friendly attentions. He wished to leave with good feelings all around.

When Rudi helped him get his trunk from the store room, Gard's forgotten passport fell out and excited the other's curiosity.

"I've never seen an American state paper before," he remarked, puffing a cigarette. "What a droll looking affair! So different from ours. Would you mind if I just glanced at it?"

"Certainly not." Anderson's suspicions of the young German glanced through Kirtley's mind. But Rudi was a thick-headed boy, and what could he or anyone accomplish with a passport? Gard had scarcely been called upon to use it. It had been treated almost as a blank formality, an empty courtesy.

"You don't have to show it in German towns—only at the frontier? Am I right?" inquired Rudi after he had minutely read it through as if he had been an official.

"Only at the frontier." Gard grew wary. This knowing and recent familiarity was not becoming entirely agreeable. It would be prudent to mystify the son.

"But of course something might happen in a German town and I might need it. So it's always convenient to have about."

"Where are you going to carry it, then?" pursued the other, handing back the ribboned paper.

"Would you think my grip would be the place?"

"Your grip? Yes, that's just like me. I always shove everything into my grip at last. See here, now. I have none of my papers about me. All in my grip—even in the house." Rudi opened to view his inside coat pocket in testimony, as if he were an important individual. Gard shifted ground again.

"I don't know. I may carry it in my pocket—with my ticket. What if I leave it in my trunk after all? I shall have to open up at the border anyhow."

The subject of the passport kept in Rudi's mind. Three days later he called out to Gard:

"I have been thinking it over and I believe you should carry your passport in your grip. It may slip out of your pocket while you are dozing in the train."

"Danke schoen!" said Gard.

The parents also took great interest in the matter. The paper ought to be examined by the German authorities. Was it not Herr Kirtley's credentials to the German nation? Nothing would answer but that Herr Bucher and Rudolph should take it in town and see that the proper officials were duly cognizant. It was another evidence to Gard that a Teuton is not content until his Government is given an opportunity to approve. The document seemed so vital to Villa Elsa that Gard mentioned it to Anderson in the way of gossip.

"Don't leave it in your trunk or grip," cautioned the elder. "Keep it on your person. Sew it on your shirt, by golly. One never needs a passport, you know, and then you need it like the devil. I've heard of two or three persons this month who got separated from their passports and were in trouble. Something seems to be really going on under the surface. But spring is the classic time for war as well as love to break out."

Gard decided to follow Anderson's advice and keep the parchment in his innermost pocket. He also checked his trunk through to the frontier, contrary to Rudi's suggestion. He said nothing of these changes, yet he was far from thinking that the hand of the Goth would dare to reach out after him—a friendly foreigner and guest leaving this peaceful hearthstone, so effusive in its amicable leave-takings.

Just before his departure he felt something of a restraint in the household. He attributed it to the social stiffness of the German. This increases when intercourse comes to a point. Affecting moments jolt hard in him—moments when embarrassment is natural to all humans.

At the gate, for the last time, the Herr was energetically smoking his long pipe. The Frau frequently wiped her sweating face with a handkerchief. The boys kept kicking away the dogs whose barking half drowned the parting words. Gard said good-by, too, to the old linden by his window. How one can miss a tree!

And Elsa! He flattered himself she looked a mite regretful that he was going. She was starting for her class when she joined the topsy-turvy group by the gate and waved her creamy hand. Her small straw hat, wreathed fatiguingly in roses, clung desperately to her head in the awkward way German women have of wearing headgear, and made her, despite her blossom-like attractiveness, seem quaint and so truly German like the rest. She looked to Gard as pink and blonde as the year before when he had first been dazzled by her glistening hair.

On crossing the river he could see her moving down their meadow path where Heine had sung to him, her etching materials under her arm. One last look at the row of knightly castles rimming the heights above her and at the storied Elbe at her feet as she hurried along! He gulped down a small something in his throat, and turned his face toward the station.

After all, Dresden had been a year of his life.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

A JOURNEY

At Eisenach, bound for Frankfort, the train guard punched Kirtley's ticket and showed him into a compartment that was empty save for a military figure engaged in reading a large newspaper, holding it firmly with gloved hands before his face. Although the day was warm, an army cap was clapped down low on the head.

Gard sank back on the cushions and closed his eyes. He was somewhat fatigued from having climbed the Wartburg whose castle, famed in the history of Luther, lay asleep there like a long and oddly shaped beetle. He soon fell into a doze. When he became conscious again, his companion's countenance was buried as before in the paper. Underneath it, gray trousers and large boots protruded in Kirtley's direction as if to ward off any familiar approach.

That editorial page must be extensive and absorbing, Kirtley commented to himself as he whiffed the refreshing breeze that came in his window from Hesse close by on the west. In a delicious half-dreaminess he thought the stranger turned the journal and that a reddish, be-whiskered visage, with a flat, wide-lobed nose, popped into view for a second.

The motionless reading, nevertheless, continued for the remainder of the trip. To the sweet July zephyr and the snug landscapes flitting by, the soldier paid no heed. How German this was!—Kirtley mused. The Teutons are a wintry race and often take their summer joys in a hard, hyperborean fashion. He could not but admire this example of physical constraint. The iron rigors of Prussian drill had made the best army in the world.

Or perhaps this was some queer, abnormal chap. Gard remembered fragments of stories he had heard of comic or tragic happenings in the separated, locked compartments of continental trains. But the tales were too vague in his mind to pique any anxiety. He roused himself and took up his German newspaper. Muffled war scares. Always war scares more or less in evidence. How dull the Teuton journals would be without them! Dog days were coming and brains were no doubt effervescing.

The forty-eight hours in the rich old capital on the Main were full and Kirtley had almost forgotten his peculiar fellow traveler from Eisenach. What was his amazement, after his guard had punched his transportation and closed him into his compartment in the train for Heidelberg, to find the same individual seated alone again in the corner, engrossed in his voluminous and stationary paper!

This began to be disturbing. Gard was not more brave than the average mortal, but fear had not really been born into his bones. Was this some weird affair? Was it a spy at work, combining German earnestness with German farcicalness? The ludicrous extremes of Jim Deming's experience flashed over Kirtley's mind. But he felt as full confidence in his innocence as had Jim, and he had not given a Cinderella party.

It was a short run to the celebrated university town on the Neckar through ancient Hesse. What would Gard do? This was a nonsensical situation. He decided to crack it open, find out what it was all about. He summoned his best German and formally addressed a casual remark to the stranger. No answer. He did not hear.

"Oh, deaf! Probably dumb too!" Gard exclaimed to himself. His next move was to step across to the other window for the evident purpose of throwing out something. A lurch of the train caused him to stumble against the high boots. They remained motionless. He discovered that the eyes behind the paper were fixed in a stare.

It was a stuffed figure!

A mere puppet. And yet a thrill of alarm, for the first time, shot through Gard. It was not reassuring. He thought of Rudi. Was this some official prank young Bucher had set going? It would be like him. He must be a spy, as Anderson had insisted. Was the son trying to act with confederates far away over here near the Rhine?

The passport! Rudi and the family knew all about it. Kirtley felt in his inside shirt pocket. He was relieved to find the parchment still there. How foolish he would have been to leave it in his grip, as Rudi had urged! A traveler couldn't be with his grip every moment. But why was such a paper considered valuable by the Secret Service?

As he returned to his seat, Kirtley gave the legs a kick "just for luck." He could not help laughing. The burlesque! The Germans were certainly a curious people. This was like some fantastic tale of Hoffmann with its marionettes and other childish stuff so dear to the race.

It came over him that this image was thus being conveniently transported from one town to another for some show—some Jarley waxworks. But how, then, about that other form in the train from Eisenach? It had certainly been alive. Had he not seen it turn its paper? Yet, was he sure? He had been half asleep and might have imagined it.

As he revolved the matter in his mind, he was less and less positive. At any rate, how explain the fact that this exact figure had been on the two trains and that each time he had been with it alone? How was it known here what trains he would take? Only the Buchers were advised.

Whether a silly hoax or a performance of the tremendous sleuth system of Germany, Gard was too unsettled to enjoy fully his brief sojourn at Heidelberg. He decided to trip up any pursuers. Instead of resuming by rail his journey to Mannheim, according to that section of his ticket, he took an auto. For every reason that would be pleasanter. He could see to better advantage the far-famed, vine-clad valley of the Neckar where it merges into the wide and noble plains of the Rhine.

From Mannheim he went by boat as proposed. His be-whiskered friend did not put in an appearance and Kirtley congratulated himself on the riddance. The more he reflected, the less he made any sense out of it. Coincidence, practical joke, spy system at white heat, hallucination—all suggestions seemed equally untenable.

At Cologne he found the newspapers full of discussions about war. On the trip he had not read much. He was either sight-seeing, traveling, weary or sleepy. For that matter, the public generally was not aware that fearful hostilities were imminent, and he gave the subject no keen notice.

There is not much to view in the city of odors—Coleridge's city of "two and seventy" smells. Only the cathedral. Although the museum is mediocre Gard dropped in there at noon to fill in his time. After wandering about he became aware that there was, in the distance, another visitor whose occasional shuffling footsteps first attracted his attention among the eye-obstructing objects. Then he saw, at times, a bulky form bending over some curiosity and contemplating it.

As Kirtley had no companion on his journey, except the military scarecrow, he felt a touch of lonesomeness and was glad when he gradually approached near enough to see that this person was a kindly looking German who had the wondering air of a sight-seer. In their leisurely itineraries they at last met in front of a small bronze copy of a Roman horse marked with italics in Gard's guide book.

The other looked, too, as if he wanted to speak, and his cheerful countenance invited Kirtley's readiness to visit with someone. The stranger was in appearance a prosperous man of about thirty-five, blond, with a very small curling mustache under a small nose. Though he kept smiling he still said nothing, as if doubtful of a first advance.

Gard hesitated, then broke the ice.

"I don't know anything about Roman horses," he essayed. "I can't tell whether this is a good thing or not." The other was affably relieved and was soon pouring out information about the animal.

"Excuse me," he ventured, "but I raise horses on my estate and I know a little about them. The Roman horse was, of course, smaller, shorter, stockier, than our modern type. Small heads, short necks, built closer to the ground. Just like the Roman himself. This is a splendid example."

Seeing that Gard followed him he began again with:

"Excuse me." And he plunged into a minute, quite exhaustive, discussion of the Latin specimen before them, as they walked round and round to view it from all angles. Kirtley had never before realized there were so many points—fine points—about this familiar quadruped. The German showed why this animal could not speed, could not make nearly as many miles a day as his present successor. But, like the Roman, he had endurance and he was undoubtedly easier to handle. There were the withers, the haunch, the hock, and a score of other features upon which Gard's new acquaintance held forth, introducing almost every remark with his rather embarrassed "excuse me."

The astonishing Teuton erudition again! Gard had to marvel at it once more. This German was, by rare exception, ingratiating. They finally introduced themselves. Herr Furstenheimer of Wuerttemberg—a farmer. Gard concluded he did not dislike Germans of the south. Their temperaments, voices, manners, are somewhat softer than those of the north.

"I haven't been in Cologne in twenty years," Furstenheimer explained. "Just stopped off. I wonder if you—I see you too are a tourist—happen to be going my way. Excuse me, but that would be odd, wouldn't it?"

"Yes—I'm bound for Rotterdam."

"Rotterdam—- why so am I!" ejaculated the German in a happy moment. "I'm on my way to visit my sister there. I haven't seen her for years. It's really shameful. What train do you take?"

"The two o'clock. I wish you might be going along. One gets somewhat bored traveling alone."

"I'm the same way. I like company. I had intended going on to-night, but this Cologne one hears so much about is disappointingly dull, isn't it? Nothing to see." They conversed in German to Kirtley's linguistic satisfaction.

"But I'm stopping off at Aix-la-Chapelle," he had to say. "That's at four. Then I'm taking the late train."

"What is there at Aix? I don't remember."

"I want to see Charlemagne's tomb."

"Oh, so? That can't be duller than Cologne, can it? I don't see that I would be losing any time by it either. I'll tell you what I'll do. If I decide to join you—and I hope I shall—you'll see me at the two o'clock. But if I don't—well, Aufwiedersehen!—let us hope—and I am delighted to have met you."

Gard was gratified when the sociable Wuerttemberger arrived at the station. They went on to Aix in a compartment full of militaires. The countryside, swimming in the sunlight, lay tidy and dimpling in the gentle arms of a peace and prosperity that made the newspaper talk of a campaign seem unreal and preposterous.

Furstenheimer appeared to have only the interests of a small land-holder, and gossiped about his farm, his horses and prices. He was not apparently concerned about the war excitement. Agriculture in Wuerttemberg was more important. Like most Germans, whether there was war or no war, seemed much the same thing with him. Either must be taken naturally and philosophically like a state of Nature. Furstenheimer was not fond of being away from home. To be frank, his brother-in-law in Rotterdam had got into financial straits and his own sister was ill. They had become almost strangers in the long separation. And that was not right, was it? He really had had to go.

When they arrived at Aix—the German Aachen—they decided to leave their grips in an inn, across the station Platz, so that they could conveniently dine there and be near at hand for the express. Then they started for the cathedral which, with its eleven centuries, loomed under a lofty octagon from a low hill.



CHAPTER XXXIX

THE TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE

In a few minutes the two travelers reached the side portal of the hoary temple. It represented the seat of Charlemagne's political and ecclesiastical power—the capitol of the ancient Franks. The door was closed. A service was being held. It would be out at five o'clock.

To occupy the interim Gard and his new friend went over to the neighboring town hall, located on the site of the emperor's palace. They found it a gay Gothic edifice, the roof flanked by two pert towers. Inside they tiptoed about with silent respect in the immense coronation gallery—one of the largest rooms in the world. Here the medieval German emperors were crowned and imperial diets held.

When the tourists returned to the cathedral they met two young, clean-shaven Germans, obviously travelers like themselves, also wishing to enter. One was tall, the other short. While waiting for the audience to file out, the four struck up a casual conversation about the edifice. Gard, full of his guide book, was pleased to inform them on a subject of which they pleaded ignorance.

They sauntered into the somber, august interior. Above were the impressive stained glass windows, high-flung in the octagon. Kirtley's binocular, strung over his shoulders, came in handy to the others. The Germans seemed somewhat posted on stained glass (Teuton erudition!) and with Gard's binocular they went off for an inspection from the exterior.

He preferred to remain and contemplate alone the solemn scene about him. It was an hour he had looked forward to. He wanted to recall what he had read of this historic spot and the epic and romantic associations here of the most celebrated of Carolingians.

In the mosaic flooring at his feet, as he sat down, was the tombstone which (in the tradition) lies above the imperial victor who sits below waiting with his scepter in his hand and his white beard ever growing—the king of the Middle Ages. How many, many potentates, great and small, during all the intervening centuries, had bowed their heads and spoken words of reverence in the presence of the only sepulchre remaining in situ and intact of the world-conquerors of antiquity! Of all these reputed soliloquies, that of Don Carlos, in the spacious Alexandrines of Victor Hugo in "Hernani," Gard remembered as being the most famous. He had heard what a long and impressive recital it always is as one of the tests of the dramatic actor at the Theatre Francais.

His thoughts ran on. Without Charlemagne's military successes, his widespread reorganizations, the political and civil grandeur of his acts, his picturesque journeys, his union of church and state, what would the Dark Ages have been? In its mountains of fact and luring mists of fable he had stood mighty and solitary, inspiring its imagination, its legends, its superstitions, its songs. He was its compelling figure. He it was who unified medievaldom and laid the bases of what had since governed in western Europe and prevented it from remaining a vast region of large and small tribes fighting among themselves. And he alone, among the powerful military chieftains of the old, old past, had died both peacefully and undefeated.

Why, then, has he faded from view? This was an interesting question to Kirtley. Why has Caesar so outshone Charlemagne? Why are Homer and Vergil, in comparison, coming ever more to the fore? Why has Dante become the masterly profile of medievalism?

A significant answer had before occurred to Gard. These four personages could write marvelously well while Charlemagne could scarcely even write his name. Had he been a great author, why would not his fame be burning brightly like theirs? In every institution of education their classic language is kept before both youth and professor. Their cults accordingly grow. While the Frank so largely shaped the Middle Ages and furnished leading motives for its background, the Italian merely pictured it.

And yet the latter has become its most distinct luminary. His art has surpassed in renown the medieval sword and crown. His pen is a constant self-advertiser while those emblems of state fall to the ground. Though every spot associated with the lives of Caesar, of Vergil, of Dante, is sought by student and sage, the tomb of Charlemagne is being forgotten. Who knows that it exists or cares? And is it all because he had no literary skill? A gigantesque character, surrounded by his romantic paladins—Roland, Oliver, Ganelon and the rest—his face turned alike toward west, east and south—to France and Germany and Italy—he nevertheless has long been sinking into the ever-darker shadows of a dulled obscurity....

Gard's friend and the other two Germans presently returned and interrupted his ruminations. They had seen their fill and were anxious to escape from this gray cavern of a dim oblivion. Outdoors the party of four found the sun shining, but rain clouds were hovering in the east. The strangers had plenty of time as they were without a fixed itinerary. They were very agreeable and it was suggested that all dine together. Would not a stroll in the environs be meanwhile a suitable diversion?—out toward the attractive Lousberg and its belvedere?

Herr Furstenheimer had indicated an inquiry to Kirtley as to whether he would like to join the other two. Upon his signifying affirmatively, the four walked northward. The flat face of one of the young men Gard fancied he had seen before. It was, however, of a somewhat familiar Teuton variety and lost in the maze of all the German visages he had seen.

They idled along, recounting their exciting experiences in traveling. Gard told of the wax image in the train as the singular incident he had to offer. As it did not appear to appeal to the curiosity of his companions, he dropped the subject. The Germans are used to the grotesque and egregious.

At intervals the company changed about by twos, their hats coming off frequently in the warmth of the evening. On reaching the top of a small ascent, a summer inn there invited to cooling drinks. It was a low-storied, straggling construction, with a large green yard and trees. There were no guests as yet for the approaching meal time.

The cathedral acquaintances took one side of a table under the branches, and the companionable Furstenheimer with Gard faced them. With the beer they began comparing the parts of the world they hailed from. Kirtley belonged to that distant land—America! Incredible! He had traveled so far. It was a country the two newcomers wished to visit. They could not credit the surprising things they had heard concerning the United States. All was so odd there.

The smaller German, with the broad face, having lost no time in being full of compliments about Kirtley's accent, went on:

"You Americans learn our language better than we do yours. I could never get the th in my school. You seem to do everything so differently in America, too. Now, there's your great game of cards, for instance. I was on a boat once going down the Danube and some of your compatriots were playing it. They called it—ach Gott!—what did they call it? You know."

"Poker," said Gard, amused.

"No, that isn't it."

"Bridge."

"No, the devil, why can't I think of it? They played it—if I had a pack of cards I would show you what I mean. You could name it then."

The German called the attendant. The latter did not come. The other hurried into the restaurant and came back waving a deck.

"Now I will try to show you. I can't do it well. I have never seen it but once."

"Monte," said Gard. It was not the name the German recognized. Kirtley laughed over this old county fair acquaintance. Three card monte under the walls of Charlemagne's church! This was bringing the ancient and the modern together with a vengeance. Furstenheimer thought the game was droll. He had never seen any played like that.

"How can that be a game!" he exclaimed—"only three cards! You must have left out something. It looks ridiculous. What's the point?"

"Why, you bet!" cried the dealer who was awkwardly manipulating the cards. The two strangers wagered with each other, and the Wuerttemberger at last got interested and bet first against one, then the other. In a few minutes he had lost two hundred marks to the dealer, and acted as if worried. The dealer won also from his associate, but not so readily.

"A gambler, and playing clumsily to fool me," Gard had promptly said to himself. He endeavored to save his friend from falling deeper into the toils. He nudged him under the table, but the Teuton stupidly understood nothing. He kept on, more and more distraught, losing money, then groaning about it and wiping his trickling and distressed countenance.

When the dealer finally saw that Kirtley would not wager, he grew noisy.

"Not to play your own national game—is it polite, I say?" He flaunted the cards before Gard.

"I do not bet," Kirtley repeated as pleasantly as he could, and the tall German tried to quiet his mate.

The rain, which had been brewing, presently began to come down and was breaking up the sport. They agreed to dine in the inn and go back to town when the downpour was over. Gard's friend squared accounts—four hundred and eighty marks passed across. He looked unhappy enough. But the dealer was still far from satisfied because the American had not played. The German had won from the other two. Could he not win from an American in an American game? He had been eager to wager at one turn all the money he had gained.

"A pair of cheap gamblers," Gard repeated to himself. He wished his foolish friend from Wuerttemberg had kept out of it. They were here on the edge of a strange city, in an unknown inn, at nightfall. It showed that Furstenheimer was a green country man who, as he admitted, had seldom been away from home. He had not even seen his neighboring Rhine in years.

The rain was now pelting them and they scurried indoors.



CHAPTER XL

THE END OF A LITTLE GAME

The short German had worked himself up into an irritable state. He led the way about the arrangements for dining, his tall friend all the while mildly attempting to soothe his ruffled feelings. Furstenheimer, appearing much crest-fallen, meekly followed their wishes.

A private room must be had, the dealer announced. They took a detached one with the door opening out toward the highway. Each one of the three proposed to have a favorite dish from his province.

The little German grew more fussy. He condemned the restaurant manager and got at loggerheads with the waiter. He must at least have a Mecklenburg salad as he came from Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The waiter did not know what it was and the irascible Teuton informed him bluntly that he was a Dummkopf. The card player would make it himself and all must do him the honor of eating it. He proclaimed in a loud voice that it was the superior of all salads. He had won at cards, the money stuck out of his pockets. He was triumphant and becoming insolent.

Kirtley wished he were out of this company. He opened the outside door a moment for fresh air. He noticed that the door had a spring lock. The rain was coming down in torrents. And he ought not to abandon his naive friend.

The repast was begun by drinking the prevailing toast to Der Tag! His companions now talked openly about the threatening war, and Gard, who had not seen a paper since morning, did not know that hostilities were at last in the way of breaking out. From the conversation he could but judge that all Belgium and northern France were to be made German. This seemed simple and inevitable through all the blustering and bragging. England—America—did not appear to cut any figure. They had no armies, hence they were negligible.

When the company got down to the Mecklenburg salad, the clamorous German expatiated about it at length as he began his bustling preparations for its manufacture.

"One of the great points of my salad is plenty of pepper." With a flourish he grabbed the little pepper box to suit the action to the words, and nothing came out. It was empty.

"Waiter, waiter, bring some pepper, you stupid Kerl. Don't you know enough to set the table properly?"

Another pepper receptacle was brought, but it would not work. It was stopped up.

"Gott im Himmel! waiter, you idiot, bring some pepper and be quick about it." And the swaggerer began abusing him, the inn and inferentially men who would not wager in a social little card game. The servitor raced in, mad and muttering, and banged down a big can of the much desired condiment. At last, Gott sei Dank! there was pepper by the wholesale. The salad proceeded on its troubled course.

"You like our Germany—yes?" was inserted. Kirtley assured the three that he had had a pleasant year.

"Our Germany is a great country," explained the tall Teuton in a high, cracked voice. "And after the war it will be a much greater country." He was flushed with drink like the other two. The Germans lifted their glasses again to Der Tag, and Gard, their guest, joined in half-heartedly. There was this time an ugly firmness showing in the demonstration that he did not fancy. He was frankly uncomfortable. His companions did not like it because he drank sparingly in spite of all the vehement urging.

The salad proved to be a wonderful dish, hot and strong, fit for the iron stomach of a "blond beast." It not only bit but was provocative. In the growing conviviality the subject leaped from salad to cards. The winner took out his money. He began shaking it in Gard's eyes, insisting once more on wagering it that his American friend could not pick the card. With the demi-tasses and cigars he ordered the deck and table. He started the game, having locked out the blockhead of a waiter and dropped the key into his own pocket.

Gard would not play. His ire was rising. The small German declared himself mistreated. He jumped up from the table and burst out in a tirade against shoddy Americans. This brought each man to his feet. The dealer, violent and familiar, put his hands on Gard.

"You are a dollar American and dare not bet."

"Please keep your hands off me," cried Kirtley and drew back, shaking with the affront. The German persisted and Gard's football days stood him in good stead. He knocked him down. At this the mask was thrown off.

"Get his passport!" yelled the dealer on the floor. The other two began to draw weapons and started toward Kirtley. He was almost unnerved. His genial Wuerttemberg friend a spy! It was the Secret Service.

As he stepped back, thunderstruck, his hand grazed the big pepper can which had been left on the side table. It sent an inspiration whizzing through his brain. He whisked off its unfastened top, grabbed a handful of pepper, and with a swing of the kind he used to use in his throws from left field to home plate—let go with all his force.

The aim was true. The pepper swept into the eyes and mouths of the two men. The other was half lying on the floor near their feet and he also received a dose. Pepper filled their side of the room and blinded them as they sneezed and groped about in pain. Gard bolted for the outer, self-locking door and, almost before he realized it, was out in the highway in the rain, heading away from the city and in the direction of the Dutch border which, he knew, lay not far away.



CHAPTER XLI

ARE THEY HUNS?

It was an instinctive move to get out of Deutschland—raucous, hostile Deutschland, lying athwart his soul. But his grip? his overcoat? his umbrella? He faced back toward the town. His mind was in a tumult. No, he must make for the frontier at all hazards. The Germans, whenever they recovered, would naturally expect him to return for his articles and would watch them or have them watched. He felt for his passport, money, trunk check. They were safe. He was sure his trunk would be at the border for him. He turned about and began running. The bellowing condition of the agonized sleuths and the locked door would enable him to get a good start under the cover of the darkness and storm.

When almost breathless he stopped running and walked forward rapidly. There was no travel in his direction. But he had to dodge frequent oncoming vehicles with men and materials of some kind. They were being concentrated at Aix—a main distributing point for the invasion of Belgium.

He was wet through, yet hot as a furnace. The cooling rain was grateful. The loss of his grip and things would be inconvenient, not serious. He began running again. Then he walked as fast as he could. He was more and more convinced that those Germans would count on his going back for his belongings. They would not imagine that a dollar American would leave his possessions and hoof it to the Dutch Limberg on a night like this.

His brain was on fire. He thought of everything. Furstenheimer had been a trailing sleuth. He had fooled Kirtley completely. It was a masterly piece of work. Gard metaphorically took off his hat to the German Secret Service. Notwithstanding the Jim Deming episode and Anderson's animadversions, this had been a highly expert demonstration of the art.

Gard's mind went over his whole trip from Eisenach, trying to find where his suspicions should have been more aroused. He could discover no loophole where any unflattering dullness on his part was particularly at fault. He had made rather the most advances at Cologne to the self-styled Furstenheimer with his Roman horse.

How casually, too, the two confederates had been picked up at the cathedral! Their intelligent interest in stained glass! Very clever. All had been wonderfully clever. He now saw that when Furstenheimer left him at Cologne to decide about joining him, and also when the three had gone off to inspect the windows, there had been ample time to perfect their scheme.

His passport! What on earth could they want of that! In the German way they had used a steam hammer to crack a hickory nut. No one in 1914 had an inkling of what service American passports were to be to the Kaiser's Government. The world was soon to rub its eyes over Germany's treacherous, fiendish, employment of chemicals both on documents and on humans. Lackadaisical mankind did not then dream of the thoroughness and elaboration with which Deutschland was preparing her many deep and diabolical designs.

Toward dawn Gard, pretty well winded and in a bath of perspiration, trudged along more slowly while his thoughts streamed precipitately ahead under the pressure of the stupefying developments. He now knew who the little German was. He was that rigid, whiskered, military person in the train from Eisenach! The same flat, wide-lobed nose. He had not guessed it before because the face, clear of a beard, had really suggested in Aix (he now realized) that of the typical shaven Teuton waiter. But why had the spy traveled in such a stiff and mysterious fashion? Likely to locate the passport—find out whether it was then being carried in the grip or on Kirtley's person. In some way—probably from the manner in which the grip had been handled—the sleuth had convinced himself it was kept in a pocket.

Although Gard could not clearly make it out, the puppet must have been an ingenious device to mislead. The ridiculous card dealer, going through all his mock part with such desperate earnestness, could very well have conceived this eccentric project. Would anyone outside Germany have believed in such use of a stuffed figure? The maneuver succeeded in a fashion, for Gard had not been as shrewd as he imagined in taking the auto from Heidelberg. He may have caused a change in tactics, but he had simply fallen into the hands of Furstenheimer in the museum. The leisurely stroll, the game of cards, the badgering over the betting, everything, had been fully worked out. Somehow, through it all, they were to deprive him of his state paper—likely when he had become intoxicated, as was evidently planned.

But the revelation about the Buchers! That was the finishing blow. "Dastards!" Gard hurled out the word. It was not only Rudi but his parents who had followed his leadership. The son's surprising concern over the passport, their insistence on seeing about his route and his ticket, Rudi's persistence about suggestions for carrying the document—all was now plain. It must be that war was coming and Rudi knew it.

Dastards! To betray their guest, to cause him to go through this miserable experience, endanger his health when he had lately been in a sick bed! Their kind hospitality, their flush demonstrations of friendliness, their little presents! This was the final mark that, to Gard Kirtley, branded the German as only a partly reclaimed Goth.

Perhaps the atmosphere of restraint he had detected in the Buchers at the last, amid all their cordial expressions and deeds, was due to the changed role they then knew they were playing as against an American "pig." At their frontier all human relations—obligations, honor, amicability, trust, good faith, religion—were exchangeable for brutality and dastardly brutality.

Yet who in 1914 would have believed such things? It was the case of old Rome asleep, with barbarians swarming in Europe. Gard kept coming back to the sole word for it all—Hun!—in the Anderson definition.

And what to do with the Huns—about them? Can the world ever get on a genuine, fraternal basis for living with them? Can they ever be made to become like other people? These questions kept surging through his mind as he hurried along.

When Holland was reached that morning, his passport was declared impeccable and his faithful trunk caused him no trouble. Although the war excitement was seizing that region he fortunately met no delay in getting to the coast. Once out of Deutschland he felt amazingly well despite the weariness of his exhausting night. He concluded that the vigorous exercise and sweating he had been through had steamed out of him the vileness he had found in Germany. It acted like a rejuvenating process. Gard now seemed to himself like a clean, new man. He was to be a new man.



CHAPTER XLII

THE ANTI-CHRISTIANS?

In England, when war came, the confusion was unbelievable. All that Gard had seen, heard, gone through in Deutschland proved the awfulness of the Force flung against Europe which had stupidly considered itself civilized.

He was burning to enlist. But what a chagrin to find his services not wanted! The only satisfaction he could get lay in the suggestion to wait. The more he was put off, the more he was bent on reaching the firing line.

In his enforced and impatient idleness he took out his German note book and began writing letters to Rebner in America, thus giving partial vent to his own feelings. The following brief extracts were written first as he went about different camps, offering himself, then at the front:

England, October, 1914.

... You know how I went to Germany at your urging, with every favorable impulse toward the Germans. But you had little idea what they are. If our fellow-Americans realized what was thought and said of them beyond the Rhine, they would be in battle now.

As there is no prospect of our Government wanting fighting men, I am trying to get into the English service. No success yet....

How could you, my good mentor, be so in error about the race from which you sprang? Had you been in Germany, the scales would have dropped from your eyes. You have never lived with the Germans there—only read the best about the "most advanced" of mankind. They are so different from our American-Germans. You did not know that the educated Teuton at home is apt to be dirty in his person and habits, eats with his knife, walks before women, kicks his children about, has coarse or vulgar ideas on female chastity, enjoys the obscene, has no good words to say of anyone beyond his boundaries.

Pray do not fancy I am pretending to chide you. Weren't we all like you in America, dazzled before what apparently we were humbly ready to admit as the super-race? And yet in a multitude of ways it is so obviously a people set off by itself in much barbarism. There is its Gothic script which offends the eye somewhat like outlandish runes. Its very language growls and snorts at you, sounds threatening as if angry—pardon me for these sentences! There are its mud-colored towns and architecture, its rude life, rough skinned, hairy, ferocious, with tastelessness prevailing.

The German imagination is never shot through with clear, happy sunshine. The German emotions are distinctively expressed by thumpings in some form. The Teuton's inability to see himself as another sees him—is this not, above all, the stamp of an under-civilized people?...

* * * * *

England, October, 1914.

... Do not think I am unduly harsh, prejudiced, revengeful. I am trying to write in measured terms of what has been forced in upon me and my attention against my wish or expectations.

I have met but one American who said that war was at hand and knew what the Germans really are at home. He was an elderly journalist in Dresden who was jeered at until he almost imagined himself mentally unbalanced. Others thought him so, at any rate.

But Anderson was a true prophet. Dear isolated, desolated soul! I wonder where he is now. I wonder if he got out safely. How I wish I could grasp his hand and say, How wise were your convictions!

Like myself he had gone to Deutschland to admire and love the Germans. But he found what I found—an astonishing amount of ruthlessness. How could one expect that the ultimate world-justice and world-humanity were to evolve out of a race to which the army, armed soldiers and statesmen clad in steel, stand for so much?

How could anything of universal good come from a people who consider nothing from the viewpoint of a kindly common brotherhood? Contempt, intolerance, physical force, are what they gloat over in international relations. I discovered that when they must ask pardon or make amends, they do so with bad grace. They do not take a magnanimous and frank satisfaction or pleasure in righting a wrong.

You would not believe how lacking their character is in the capacity for penitence, for atonement. We will never see them sorry for any of their present enormities. The still, small voice in them has not been allowed to develop. Their notion of ethics is so different that it is inadmissible from our standards.

To be sensitive, grieve, suffer morally, is apart from their normal consciousness. For all this tender and beautiful side of human nature they substitute only the discomforted feelings of defeat. No matter how this present conflict ends, he who looks for any sympathetic actions or noble regrets from them will be dumfounded....

* * * * *

England, November, 1914.

Hurrah! I am at last, after disappointments and frettings, under way for Flanders. Lo, I am become, as it were, an Englishman! The British now see the full peril and are taking almost any kind of men, and I'm going along. I suppose it is because I am so keyed up that I feel so well. I'm surprised at myself. I guess I must have, after all, a little good Anglo-Saxon grit in me.

I am trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not permitted to tell where....

As I was on the point of saying in my last letter, Jesus is never a watchword in Germany. The Nazarene meekness makes small appeal there. All is Gott. The Teuton regards Christ as too much of a weakling. Had He an army? Could He shoot, as all Germans can? He would not fight and therefore was properly destroyed. If His foolish ideas were followed, the weak would eventually rule the earth whereas, to the German mind, the strong should manifestly rule the earth. The strongest are the fittest, and the fittest should alone survive.

To the Goth the Christian religion and philosophy are baneful, baleful. As the result of their feeble policy was not Christ followed—the Germans claim—by the Dark Ages when mankind was obsessed by His superstitious worship? Lifting men out of this morass, the proper practical, scientific and warlike forces came at length into play and we have the magnificent modern regime whose basis is armed strength.

Hence—it is argued—Germany came into her own and inevitably leads the world. She represents the perfection of organized physical and mental powers which are the antitheses of the Christ ideal.

And so you never hear much in Deutschland about Peace and Good Will, Do as You would be Done by, Faith, Hope and Charity and the greatest of these is Charity. Such Christian texts and mottoes, which fill our American homes, churches and public places, are little in evidence in Germany because they do not enter into the life. The popular nomenclature is pagan rather than Biblical. Already in this war we behold the Kaiser drawing his names for forts and trenches from his wild pagan mythology, not from Christian sources. And in Deutschland, acts in the field count for so much more than words in the pulpit.

If the Huns win, Teuton hate will, of course, succeed Christian love as the human creed. Friendship, as we know it, will largely cease to exist. Friends will be those who can be cowed into truculence or bought. There will be no truth, justice, equity, in our meaning. Only the will or whim of the Emperor. His State Church, with its worship of Him, will grow as the church.

Everything that southern and western Europe stands for, from ancient Greece to the northern points of Scotland and Ireland (with America in addition)—beauty, loveableness, the brightness of life with its joyousness, gayety, grace, charm—will be stamped down under the metallic heels of the Kaiser's battalions and bureaucrats....

* * * * *

Boulogne, January, 1915.

After what I have written you from Germany, and since, about my unexpected disillusionment, you will ask me:

"Well, enough of this. What ought to be done or can be done about it?"

I am thinking about a solution. Not original, for its framework was suggested by my old journalistic friend. I will send you an outline of his idea as he gave it to me one day. All that he said and prophesied has come so direfully true that I have now full faith and confidence in his vision and practical sense on the subject of the Goth race. For he lived and observed among them seven years.

That's the great point—living together. And I do not mean living together when people are mature or old but when young—when minds, sympathies, etc., are plastic and pliable. As long as the young Germans are kept home—never sent abroad unless as spies in some form—the Teutons will remain Huns.

Granted that they can't help it if they are born with the Hun strain in their blood which their education or instruction not only preserves but enrages. Admit that they want any barbarism eliminated from their veins. That would be an important point over which our world should hold out to them the glad hand....

Don't be offended, but the best thing that I learned in college was to throw well from left field. At any rate it saved my life, I suppose, at Aix. And I've grown wonderfully fond of pepper. It braces a chap for this Iceland wind that howls down upon us at times. We call baseball and football a part of education. Good, brave things. The Germans don't have them because they have only "instruction."

From what I observed beyond the Rhine, education is a growth in free and liberal countries. As we are seeing in the war, German instruction turns out experts, but also intellectual monsters and scientific fiends—instructed heathens....

Strange to say, I don't believe I could have stood this existence here if my system had not got a good cleansing out when I was sick. I am all the time thinking about the Huns. And it is strictly necessary hereabouts.



CHAPTER XLIII

THE TEUTON PROBLEM. A SOLUTION

Flanders, a Mudhole, February, 1915.

... Is not my old friend Anderson's plan the only natural, practical, efficient method by which to humanize their barbarous instincts? Assuming that they will be defeated, as they must be, the Anderson project, as you see, is that a permanent arrangement must be offered them, and if necessary enforced upon them, whereby a multitude of young German men and women shall be sent yearly to foreign democratic lands to live and be educated there for a period. By attractive scholarships, by pecuniary inducements or by any of a number of programmes, young Germans can be tempted to this step. In living and studying, before middle age, under free and liberal conditions, they will begin looking at foreigners in a friendly, or what we should call a Christian, manner. After awhile, after generations perhaps, this leaven will work in the thick, tough, sour Teuton dough. It will transform the people. They will gradually become allies at heart instead of remaining hostiles.

As it is now, the German eats, drinks, bathes, and nauseatingly does other elemental things much as he did a hundred years ago, because he receives his instruction in his homeland with the idea, not only complacent but aggressive, that his habits are the best. And this is for the reason that he has seen no other kind when young. Do you think, for instance, that a youthful German, after living in the freedom of our young sexes, would return to the Rhine and long be content with the iron-like Teuton customs in love, courtship and marriage?

A youthful person is apt to admire the people among whom he is staying a long while for the reason that, under such circumstances, aliens are kind. He will always take pride in these foreign connections, pride in what he has learned abroad. He will think himself more fortunate and more advanced than his fellow stay-at-homes. The young German, becoming used to more amiable modes of existence, would naturally become more or less fond of them. A broader, more human social spirit—the true social spirit—would get a hold in him.

I would go further than my friend Anderson. I would have all civilized countries adopt this plan with one another as well as with Germany. The trouble with civilization, as seen in this war, is that no people understands or truly sympathizes with any foreign nation—not even among the Allies. They are strangers because they have been kept strangers. This creates suspicion, envy, enmity, for they have not in any noticeable degree lived together. They do not know one another's customs, habits, perspectives. As a result, armies, navies, tariffs, treaties backed by force, are necessary to hold civilization precariously in shape—and at what colossal effort, anxiety, expense? The different languages, literatures, arts, educations, religions, should become familiar to large numbers in each race and be the open, peaceful highways back and forth instead of, as now, barriers.

* * * * *

Flanders, another Mudhole, February, 1915.

... I see the woeful, tragic need for this international co-education all around us here at the front. The Canadians, Australians, English, French, all quarreling back and forth and pulling against one another as unfriendly strangers.

Germany is giving—has given—one great lesson to them all and to us Americans at home. And that is, IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH.

After this war the tremendous question before the world will be:

How are we going to live with the Germans?—how get on with them?

The only true and gracious solution I can see is—To associate and study together when young! Would not you—would not everyone—agree that this interchange in education, which would not be very troublesome or expensive, is a true manner in which to remove from the German make-up its savage, destructive animus toward mankind? In order really to change a race, the work must be done from the inside outward. And this means some form of education, not merely victories, edicts, Leagues.

Let or make the Teutons be associated with gentler cultures than their own. What if it does take a hundred, two hundred, years! What is that compared with having the German problem and menace unsolved in the future as in the past?

THE END