Frederick crouched in a corner of the cab. In a passion of shame, he
called himself the vilest names. He removed his slouched hat, which he
had not yet replaced by the New York chimney-pot, wiped the sweat from
his brow, and beat his fist against his forehead.
"My poor father! Within a month, I shall probably be no more nor less
than the official kept man of a prostitute. Everybody will know me and
pay homage to me. Every German barber in New York will tell his patrons
who my father is, and who I am, and what I live by, and whom I am running
after. I shall become that worthless little fiend's lap dog, her monkey
to perform tricks for her, her procurer. The German colonies in every
city, large or small, that we visit will behold in me a typical example
of the loathsome degree to which a scion of the German nobility can sink,
into what a cesspool of vice a man who was once a good man, husband, and
father can descend."
While being bowled rapidly down Broadway, Frederick, in his state of
introspection and shame, looked blindly upon the houses as they glided
by. Suddenly he started up from his crouching position. The sign of the
Hoffman House had struck his eye and recalled the appointment the men on
the _Hamburg_ had made. He consulted his watch, and found it was just
about the time they had set, between twelve and one. He called to the
driver, but before the horse could be brought to a stop, the cab had
rolled some distance beyond the hotel. Frederick got out, paid the
coachman, and in a few moments was inside the well-known New York
bar-room.
He saw a long bar, marble slabs, marble wainscoting, polished brass,
polished silver, shining mirrors, on which there was not the smallest
speck of dust, very many shining glasses, empty glasses, glasses with
straws sticking in them, and glasses partially filled with bits of ice.
Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks,
innumerable in variety, with a dexterity bordering on art and a stolidity
out of which nothing could shake them.
The wall behind the bar was studded within reaching distance with an
array of gleaming polished metal taps; back of the bar were the
passageways to the pantries and kitchen. Oil paintings hung above the
taps and doorways. Over the heads of the business men standing or leaning
at the bar, with derbies or silk hats shoved back from their foreheads,
Frederick saw a delicious woman's figure by Courbet; sheep by Troyon; a
bright seascape with clouds by Dupré; several choice pieces by Daubigny,
sheep on a dune landscape, a pool reflecting the full moon hanging low
over the horizon and two cud-chewing oxen; a Corot--a tree, a cow, water,
a glorious evening sky; a Diaz--a pond, old birches, light reflected in
the water; a Rousseau--a gigantic tree in a storm; a Millet--a pot with
turnips, pewter spoons and knives; a dark portrait by Delacroix; another
Courbet, a landscape; a small Bastien-Lepage, a girl and a man in the
grass with a great deal of light; and many other excellent pictures. He
was so fascinated that he almost forgot his recent experience and his
purpose in coming.
In his complete absorption, he was only vaguely annoyed by a rather loud
group, whose boisterous laughter and restlessness contrasted sharply with
the quiet demeanour of the other guests. Suddenly he felt a hand on his
shoulder, started, looked around and met the eyes of a man whose bearded
face seemed coarse and unfamiliar. Cocktails and other good drinks had
shot his peony complexion with a bluish tinge.
"What's the matter?" the stranger said. "Don't you know me--Captain
Butor?"
Captain Butor, the man to whom Frederick owed his life! And now he also
recognised the other members of the noisy group. There were Arthur Stoss
and his valet, Bulke, in inconspicuous black livery, sitting a little off
from the others. There were Doctor Wilhelm, and the painter Jacob
Fleischmann, and Wendler, the _Hamburg's_ engineer, and two sailors from
the _Roland_, wearing new suits and caps. They had already been engaged
on another steamer of the same line and had been presented with a fair
sum of money.
The men all greeted Frederick like an old friend. Arthur Stoss, for the
benefit of a New York gentleman, was retailing his old story, that he
intended in a short while to give up touring and retire. He made frequent
loud references to his wife, evidently considering it very worth while to
publish as widely as possible the fact that he, the man without arms,
actually possessed a wife.
"I have met with the most tremendous success this time," he said. "Last
night the audience stormed the stage and lifted me on their shoulders to
the tune of '1492,' the song they sing every evening in the Metropolitan
Theatre."
"1492"--wherever he turned his eyes, on the streets and open squares,
Frederick read advertisements of the ballad, a product of the vaudeville
stage, in which the discovery of America, four hundred years after the
landing of Columbus, was interpreted in the patriotic sense of the new
nation that had since arisen.
"Well, Doctor von Kammacher, how are you?" asked Doctor Wilhelm. "How
have you spent your time?"
"Oh, so, so," Frederick replied, shrugging his shoulders. He did not know
how he came to frame this summary dismissal of a time so rich in content.
Strange to say, here on land, in the Hoffman bar, little or none of his
former impulse remained to entrust confidences to his fellow-physician.
"How's our little girl?" Doctor Wilhelm inquired, smiling significantly.
"I do not know," Frederick returned with an expression of cool
astonishment, and added: "Whom do you mean?"
As his answers to all their inquiries were equally curt and stiff, it was
impossible to start a conversation. He himself in the first few minutes
did not understand why he had come. It was extremely disturbing to him
that the other men in the bar-room recognised the group as the survivors
of the _Roland_. Stoss by himself, the man without arms, the well-known
marksman, would have been conspicuous.
Stoss could drink holding a glass between his teeth; but he was not
touching liquor to-day. Nevertheless, he was in a treating mood, a
circumstance by which Captain Butor, Wendler, Fleischmann and the sailors
profited to toast one another freely. Nor did Doctor Wilhelm require much
urging.
In an undertone he informed Frederick that _The Staats-Zeitung_ in its
issue of the morning before had opened a collection for Fleischmann, and
a sum had already come in such as the poor fellow in his whole life had
probably never before seen. At last Frederick laughed, and heartily. He
understood why Fleischmann was drinking heavily, with so determined a
manner, and why he was puffing himself like a turkey.
"What do you think of that stuff, Doctor von Kammacher?" he asked,
pointing to the paintings and snorting disdainfully. "To call such stuff
art! Millions and millions are spent on getting those things over from
France. They palm the trash off on the Americans. I'll wager that if one
of us Germans in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin were to do no better than
that, or that"--he pointed at random to several pictures--"we'd put him
in the A B C class."
"Perfectly true," said Frederick, laughing.
"Just you wait," cried Fleischmann. "I'll show the Americans a thing or
two. German art--"
But Frederick ceased to listen. His only impression after the lapse of
some time was, that in the meanwhile Fleischmann had misused the same
words, "German art," an endless number of times. Turning to Doctor
Wilhelm he said unblushingly:
"Do you remember the way this howling dog, this creature laughing like a
lunatic, rose up out of the waves beside our boat?"
Captain Butor and Wendler, who had been laughing mightily over something,
now stepped up with brimming eyes, as if they deemed the time had come to
be serious for a few moments in the company of the two physicians.
"Did you hear, gentlemen, that Newfoundland fishermen have sighted
corpses and floating fragments of the _Roland_?" said Captain Butor.
"Life-preservers from the _Roland_ have also been found. The corpses and
fragments are said to have been washed on a sand reef, where a lot of
sharks and birds are hovering and swarming. The fishermen say the sharks
and birds are what first attracted their attention."
"What is your opinion, Captain?" asked Doctor Wilhelm. "Do you think
anybody from the _Roland_ beside ourselves will turn up dead or alive?"
As to living persons, the captain would not commit himself.
"It may be," he said, "that one or two of the life-boats were carried
farther south and entered calm waters. Only, in that case, they were not
in the course of the large steamers, and they may not have met a vessel
for three or four days. Derelicts, fragments, and corpses are usually
carried south by the Labrador Current until they meet the Gulf Stream,
which carries them to the northeast. If they turn northward with the Gulf
Stream at the Azores, they may soon reach the coast of Scotland."
"Then there is a chance," said Frederick, "that our magnificent Captain
von Kessel may still find a grave in some Scotch potter's field."
"We poor captains," said Butor, who looked more like a German horse-car
conductor than a captain. "They ask us to command the sea and the storm,
like our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we cannot, we have the choice of
drowning in the ocean or hanging on land."
Arthur Stoss joined them, and said:
"Do you remember when the _Roland_ began to sink, were the bulkheads shut
down?"