Since, in Füllenberg's opinion, Frederick von Kammacher was not
sufficiently interested in the dancer, Ingigerd Hahlström, he mentioned
several other recent Berlin celebrities also on the _Roland_ on their way
to the United States. There was _Geheimrat_ Lars, a man well-known in art
circles, who often cast the deciding vote in purchases of works of art by
the government. He was going to America to visit museums, private and
public, and study the art situation in general. There was Professor
Toussaint, an eminent sculptor, some of whose monuments had been erected
in several German cities, chiefly Berlin, works done in a wishy-washy
Bernini style.
"Toussaint," Füllenberg, who seemed to be fairly loaded with Berlin
gossip, explained, "needs money. He needs the money that his wife spends
and the social season in Berlin swallows up. He and his wife and his
wife's maid are all travelling free on his reputation. When he lands in
New York, he won't have enough in his pocket even to pay his hotel bill
for three days."
Füllenberg pointed out the sculptor, Toussaint. He was lying in a
steamer chair, rising and falling in unison with the _Roland_. As
Frederick turned to look at him, he noticed an odd man without arms
being led across the deck by his attendant, who grasped him by his
collar and carefully dragged him through a small door close by into
the smoking-room.
"That man's a vaudeville star," Füllenberg continued with his descriptive
catalogue. "He will appear in New York with Webster and Forster."
Some stewards came oscillating across the deck to serve the chilly
passengers with bowls of hot bouillon. After Füllenberg had seen to it
that his lady was duly served, he deserted her and went with Frederick to
the smoking-room. Here, of course, loud talking and tobacco smoke
prevailed. The two gentlemen lit their cigars. In one corner of the small
room, some men were playing skat, and at several tables, German and
English politics were being thrashed out. The main theme of discussion
was the rivalry between America and Europe. Wilhelm, the ship's doctor,
with whom Frederick had become acquainted at breakfast, came in from his
morning inspection of the steerage, and seated himself beside Frederick.
"There are two hundred Russian Jews emigrating to the United States or
Canada," he told him, "thirty Polish families, and about the same number
of German families from the south, north, and east of Germany. Altogether
there are nearly four hundred steerage passengers, among them five babies
at the breast and fifty children between the ages of one and fifteen."
Doctor Wilhelm invited Frederick to accompany him the next day on his
tour of inspection. He was a man of not more than twenty-six. He had a
fair complexion and wore glasses. His manner was somewhat stiff. Ever
since he had passed his examinations, two years before, he had been a
physician on a vessel. Once he had taken the trip to Japan, once to South
America, and several times to the United States. Frederick, of course,
immediately thought of his dying friend, George Rasmussen, put his hand
in his pocket, and presented his new colleague with Simon Arzt
cigarettes.
The cigarettes furnished a starting-point to tell all about George
Rasmussen; and when Doctor Wilhelm had learned everything about him,
except his name, and then learned his name, too, the world again turned
out to be a very small place. Doctor Wilhelm was a friend of George
Rasmussen's. They had studied together, one semester in Bonn and one
semester in Jena, and had belonged to the same club in Jena. The last few
years they had even corresponded. Naturally, the discovery instantly
brought the two physicians closer.
The tone in the smoking-room was that of jolly carousals in German
_Bierstuben_. The men let themselves go, talked in loud voices, and gave
rein to that coarse humour and noisy gaiety in which time flies for them
and which to many of them is a sort of narcotic, giving them rest and
ease for a while from the mad chase of existence. Neither Frederick nor
Doctor Wilhelm was averse to this tone, which revived old memories of
their student days, when they had become accustomed to it. Though to the
average student the carousals, now taboo, may be an evil, physically and
intellectually, they are the time and place, nevertheless, at which the
phoenix of German idealism soars up from tobacco smoke and beer froth
to wing its flight to the sun.
Hans Füllenberg soon felt bored in the company of the two physicians who,
in fact, had completely forgotten him; and he slipped away, back to his
lady.
"When Germans meet," he said to her, "they must scream and drink
_Brüderschaft_ until they get tipsy."
Doctor Wilhelm seemed to be proud of the smoking-room.
"The captain," he said, "is very strict about not having the gentlemen
disturbed. He has given absolute orders that women under no
circumstances, not even if they smoke, are to be permitted here."
The room had two metal doors, one on the starboard and one on the port
side. The person entering or leaving had to contend violently with the
wind and the motion of the vessel. The stewards had mastered the art
perfectly. Shortly before eleven o'clock, Captain von Kessel appeared.
It was his custom to visit the room at about this time every day. After
giving friendly or curt answers, as the case might be, to the usual
questions regarding the weather and the prospects for a good or bad
crossing, he seated himself at the same table as the physicians.
"A seaman was lost in you," he said to Frederick.
"I think you must be mistaken," Frederick rejoined. "I have had quite
enough of a salt water sousing. I assure you, I am not longing for
another."
A few hours before, a pilot-boat from the French coast had brought the
latest news, which the captain proceeded to recount in a calm, quiet
manner.
"A vessel of the Hamburg-American line, a twin-screw steamer, the
_Nordmania_, running for only a year, had a mishap about six hundred
miles out from New York. It turned back and reached Hoboken safely.
The sea was comparatively calm, but all of a sudden a waterspout arose
close to the ship, and a great mass of water burst over the ladies'
saloon, crushing through its roof and the roof of the deck below and
hurling a piano down into the very hold."
The other piece of news he told was that Schweninger was in Friedrichsruh
with Bismarck and that Bismarck's death was being expected hourly. Though
both Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick von Kammacher disapproved of Bismarck's
exceptional anti-Socialist law and its consequences, they were filled
with hero worship of the man, Doctor Wilhelm the more so, since the home
of his childhood stood on the edge of Sachsenwald, scarcely an hour's
ride from Friedrichsruh. He was choke-full, of course, of local Bismarck
anecdotes and began to reel them off.
"Are you annoyed?" Bismarck asked his barber, when he came in one day
with his moustache twirled upward in the new fashion of the race tracks.
"A moustache trimmed and twisted like that to me looks as if it were
terribly annoyed and for no reason."