He came straight to the consulate, and I was so glad to see him that I
sat him down in front of the sideboard and left orders that I was at
home to no one. We had been class-mates and room-mates at college, and
two better friends never lived. We spent the whole night in recounting
the good old days, sighed a little over the departed ones, and praised
or criticized the living. Hadn't they been times, though? The nights
we had stolen up to Philadelphia to see the shows, the great
Thanksgiving games in New York, the commencements, and all that!
Max had come out of the far West. He was a foundling who had been
adopted by a wealthy German ranchman named Scharfenstein, which name
Max assumed as his own, it being as good as any. Nobody knew anything
about Max's antecedents, but he was so big and handsome and jolly that
no one cared a hang. For all that he did not know his parentage, he
was a gentleman, something that has to be bred in the bone. Once or
twice I remember seeing him angry; in anger he was arrogant, deadly,
but calm. He was a god in track-linen, for he was what few big men
are, quick and agile. The big fellow who is cat-like in his movements
is the most formidable of athletes. One thing that invariably amused
me was his inordinate love of uniforms. He would always stop when he
saw a soldier or the picture of one, and his love of arms was little
short of a mania. He was an expert fencer and a dead shot besides.
(Pardon the parenthesis, but I feel it my duty to warn you that nobody
fights a duel in this little history, and nobody gets killed.)
On leaving college he went in for medicine, and his appearance in the
capital city of Barscheit was due obviously to the great medical
college, famous the world over for its nerve specialists. This was
Max's first adventure in the land of gutturals. I explained to him,
and partly unraveled, the tangle of laws; as to the language, he spoke
that, not like a native, but as one.
Max was very fond of the society of women, and at college we used to
twit him about it, for he was always eager to meet a new face, trusting
that the new one might be the ideal for which he was searching.
"Well, you old Dutchman," said I, "have you ever found that ideal woman
of yours?"
"Bah!"--lighting a pipe. "She will never be found. A horse and a
trusty dog for me; those two you may eventually grow to understand. Of
course I don't say, if the woman came along--the right one--I mightn't
go under, I'm philosopher enough to admit that possibility. I want her
tall, hair like corn-silk, eyes like the cornflower, of brilliant
intellect, reserved, and dignified, and patient. I want a woman, not
humorous, but who understands humor, and I have never heard of one.
So, you see, it's all smoke; and I never talk woman these times unless
I'm smoking,"--with a gesture which explained that he had given up the
idea altogether. "A doctor sees so much of women that he finally sees
nothing of woman."
"Oh, if you resort to epigrams, I can see that it's all over."
"All over. I'm so used to being alone that I shouldn't know what to do
with a wife." He puffed seriously.
Ah! the futility of our desires, of our castles, of our dreams! The
complacency with which we jog along in what we deem to be our own
particular groove! I recall a girl friend of my youth who was going to
be a celibate, a great reformer, and toward that end was studying for
the pulpit. She is now the mother of several children, the most
peaceful and unorative woman I know. You see, humanity goes whirring
over various side-tracks, thinking them to be the main line, till fate
puts its peculiar but happy hand to the switch. Scharfenstein had been
plugging away over rusty rails and grass-grown ties--till he came to
Barscheit.
"Hope is the wings of the heart," said I, when I thought the pause had
grown long enough. "You still hope?"
"In a way. If I recollect, you had an affair once,"--shrewdly.