If Mrs. Rightbody's friends had been astounded by her singular and
unexpected pilgrimage to California so soon after her husband's decease,
they were still more astounded by the information, a year later, that
she was engaged to be married to a Mr. Ryder, of whom only the scant
history was known, that he was a Californian, and former correspondent
of her husband. It was undeniable that the man was wealthy, and
evidently no mere adventurer; it was rumored that he was courageous and
manly: but even those who delighted in his odd humor were shocked at his
grammar and slang.
It was said that Mr. Marvin had but one interview with his father-in-law
elect, and returned so supremely disgusted, that the match was broken
off. The horse-stealing story, more or less garbled, found its way
through lips that pretended to decry it, yet eagerly repeated it. Only
one member of the Rightbody family--and a new one--saved them from utter
ostracism. It was young Mr. Ryder, the adopted son of the prospective
head of the household, whose culture, manners, and general elegance,
fascinated and thrilled Boston with a new sensation. It seemed to many
that Miss Alice should, in the vicinity of this rare exotic, forget her
former enthusiasm for a professional life; but the young man was pitied
by society, and various plans for diverting him from any mesalliance
with the Rightbody family were concocted.
It was a wintry night, and the second anniversary of Mr. Rightbody's
death, that a light was burning in his library. But the dead man's chair
was occupied by young Mr. Ryder, adopted son of the new proprietor of
the mansion; and before him stood Alice, with her dark eyes fixed on the
table.
“There must have been something in it, Joe, believe me. Did you never
hear your father speak of mine?”
“Never.”
“But you say he was college-bred, and born a gentleman, and in his youth
he must have had many friends.”
“Alice,” said the young man gravely, “when I have done something to
redeem my name, and wear it again before these people, before YOU, it
would be well to revive the past. But till then--”
But Alice was not to be put down. “I remember,” she went on, scarcely
heeding him, “that, when I came in that night, papa was reading a
letter, and seemed to be disconcerted.”
“A letter?”
“Yes; but,” added Alice, with a sigh, “when we found him here
insensible, there was no letter on his person. He must have destroyed
it.”
“Did you ever look among his papers? If found, it might be a clew.”
The young man glanced toward the cabinet. Alice read his eyes, and
answered,--
“Oh, dear, no! The cabinet contained only his papers, all perfectly
arranged,--you know how methodical were his habits,--and some old
business and private letters, all carefully put away.”
“Let us see them,” said the young man, rising.
They opened drawer after drawer; files upon files of letters and
business papers, accurately folded and filed. Suddenly Alice uttered a
little cry, and picked up a quaint ivory paper-knife lying at the bottom
of a drawer.
“It was missing the next day, and never could be found: he must have
mislaid it here. This is the drawer,” said Alice eagerly.
Here was a clew. But the lower part of the drawer was filled with
old letters, not labelled, yet neatly arranged in files. Suddenly he
stopped, and said, “Put them back, Alice, at once.”
“Why?”
“Some of these letters are in my father's handwriting.”
“The more reason why I should see them,” said the girl imperatively.
“Here, you take part, and I'll take part, and we'll get through
quicker.”
There was a certain decision and independence in her manner which he had
learned to respect. He took the letters, and in silence read them
with her. They were old college letters, so filled with boyish dreams,
ambitions, aspirations, and utopian theories, that I fear neither of
these young people even recognized their parents in the dead ashes of
the past. They were both grave, until Alice uttered a little hysterical
cry, and dropped her face in her hands. Joe was instantly beside her.
“It's nothing, Joe, nothing. Don't read it, please; please, don't. It's
so funny! it's so very queer!”
But Joe had, after a slight, half-playful struggle, taken the letter
from the girl. Then he read aloud the words written by his father thirty
years ago.
“I thank you, dear friend, for all you say about my wife and boy. I
thank you for reminding me of our boyish compact. He will be ready
to fulfil it, I know, if he loves those his father loves, even if you
should marry years later. I am glad for your sake, for both our sakes,
that it is a boy. Heaven send you a good wife, dear Adams, and a
daughter, to make my son equally happy.”
Joe Silsbie looked down, took the half-laughing, half-tearful face in
his hands, kissed her forehead, and, with tears in his grave eyes, said,
“Amen!”
*****
I am inclined to think that this sentiment was echoed heartily by Mrs.
Rightbody's former acquaintances, when, a year later, Miss Alice was
united to a professional gentleman of honor and renown, yet who was
known to be the son of a convicted horse-thief. A few remembered the
previous Californian story, and found corroboration therefor; but a
majority believed it a just reward to Miss Alice for her conduct to Mr.
Marvin, and, as Miss Alice cheerfully accepted it in that light, I do
not see why I may not end my story with happiness to all concerned.
A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT.
It was the sacred hour of noon at Sammtstadt. Everybody was at dinner;
and the serious Kellner of “Der Wildemann” glanced in mild reproach at
Mr. James Clinch, who, disregarding that fact and the invitatory
table d'hote, stepped into the street. For Mr. Clinch had eaten a
late breakfast at Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American, and, moveover,
preoccupied with business. He was consequently indignant, on entering
the garden-like court and cloister-like counting-house of “Von Becheret,
Sons, Uncles, and Cousins,” to find the comptoir deserted even by the
porter, and was furious at the maidservant, who offered the sacred
shibboleth “Mittagsessen” as a reasonable explanation of the solitude.
“A country,” said Mr. Clinch to himself, “that stops business at mid-day
to go to dinner, and employs women-servants to talk to business-men, is
played out.”
He stepped from the silent building into the equally silent Kronprinzen
Strasse. Not a soul to be seen anywhere. Rows on rows of two-storied,
gray-stuccoed buildings that might be dwellings, or might be offices,
all showing some traces of feminine taste and supervision in a flower
or a curtain that belied the legended “Comptoir,” or “Direction,” over
their portals. Mr. Clinch thought of Boston and State Street, of New
York and Wall Street, and became coldly contemptuous.
Yet there was clearly nothing to do but to walk down the formal rows of
chestnuts that lined the broad Strasse, and then walk back again. At the
corner of the first cross-street he was struck with the fact that two
men who were standing in front of a dwelling-house appeared to be as
inconsistent, and out of proportion to the silent houses, as were the
actors on a stage to the painted canvas thoroughfares before which they
strutted. Mr. Clinch usually had no fancies, had no eye for quaintness;
besides, this was not a quaint nor romantic district, only an entrepot
for silks and velvets, and Mr. Clinch was here, not as a tourist, but as
a purchaser. The guidebooks had ignored Sammtstadt, and he was too
good an American to waste time in looking up uncatalogued curiosities.
Besides, he had been here once before,--an entire day!
One o'clock. Still a full hour and a half before his friend would
return to business. What should he do? The Verein where he had once
been entertained was deserted even by its waiters; the garden, with its
ostentatious out-of-door tables, looked bleak and bare. Mr. Clinch was
not artistic in his tastes; but even he was quick to detect the affront
put upon Nature by this continental, theatrical gardening, and turned
disgustedly away. Born near a “lake” larger than the German Ocean,
he resented a pool of water twenty-five feet in diameter under that
alluring title; and, a frequenter of the Adirondacks, he could scarce
contain himself over a bit of rock-work twelve feet high. “A country,”
said Mr. Clinch, “that--” but here he remembered that he had once seen
in a park in his native city an imitation of the Drachenfels in plaster,
on a scale of two inches to the foot, and checked his speech.
He turned into the principal allee of the town. There was a long white
building at one end,--the Bahnhof: at the other end he remembered a
dye-house. He had, a year ago, met its hospitable proprietor: he would
call upon him now.
But the same solitude confronted him as he passed the porter's lodge
beside the gateway. The counting-house, half villa, half factory, must
have convoked its humanity in some out-of-the-way refectory, for the
halls and passages were tenantless. For the first time he began to be
impressed with a certain foreign quaintness in the surroundings; he
found himself also recalling something he had read when a boy, about
an enchanted palace whose inhabitants awoke on the arrival of
a long-predestined Prince. To assure himself of the absolute
ridiculousness of this fancy, he took from his pocket the business-card
of its proprietor, a sample of dye, and recalled his own personality in
a letter of credit. Having dismissed this idea from his mind, he lounged
on again through a rustic lane that might have led to a farmhouse, yet
was still, absurdly enough, a part of the factory gardens. Crossing
a ditch by a causeway, he presently came to another ditch and another
causeway, and then found himself idly contemplating a massive, ivy-clad,
venerable brick wall. As a mere wall it might not have attracted his
attention; but it seemed to enter and bury itself at right angles in the
side-wall of a quite modern-looking dwelling. After satisfying himself
of this fact, he passed on before the dwelling, but was amazed to see
the wall reappear on the other side exactly the same--old, ivy-grown,
sturdy, uncompromising, and ridiculous.
Could it actually be a part of the house? He turned back, and repassed
the front of the building. The entrance door was hospitably open. There
was a hall and a staircase, but--by all that was preposterous!--they
were built OVER and AROUND the central brick intrusion. The wall
actually ran through the house! “A country,” said Mr. Clinch to himself,
“where they build their houses over ruins to accommodate them, or save
the trouble of removal, is,--” but a very pleasant voice addressing him
here stopped his usual hasty conclusion.
“Guten Morgen!”
Mr. Clinch looked hastily up. Leaning on the parapet of what appeared
to be a garden on the roof of the house was a young girl, red-cheeked,
bright-eyed, blond-haired. The voice was soft, subdued, and mellow; it
was part of the new impression he was receiving, that it seemed to be
in some sort connected with the ivy-clad wall before him. His hat was in
his hand as he answered,--
“Guten Morgen!”
“Was the Herr seeking anything?”
“The Herr was only waiting a longtime-coming friend, and had strayed
here to speak with the before-known proprietor.”
“So? But, the before-known proprietor sleeping well at present after
dinner, would the Herr on the terrace still a while linger?”
The Herr would, but looked around in vain for the means to do it. He
was thinking of a scaling-ladder, when the young woman reappeared at the
open door, and bade him enter.
Following the youthful hostess, Mr. Clinch mounted the staircase, but,
passing the mysterious wall, could not forbear an allusion to it. “It is
old, very old,” said the girl: “it was here when I came.”
“That was not very long ago,” said Mr. Clinch gallantly.
“No; but my grandfather found it here too.”
“And built over it?”
“Why not? It is very, very hard, and SO thick.”
Mr. Clinch here explained, with masculine superiority, the existence of
such modern agents as nitro-glycerine and dynamite, persuasive in their
effects upon time-honored obstructions and encumbrances.
“But there was not then what you call--this--ni--nitro-glycerine.”
“But since then?”
The young girl gazed at him in troubled surprise. “My great-grandfather
did not take it away when he built the house: why should we?”
“Oh!”
They had passed through a hall and dining-room, and suddenly stepped
out of a window upon a gravelled terrace. From this a few stone steps
descended to another terrace, on which trees and shrubs were growing;
and yet, looking over the parapet, Mr. Clinch could see the road some
twenty feet below. It was nearly on a level with, and part of, the
second story of the house. Had an earthquake lifted the adjacent
ground? or had the house burrowed into a hill? Mr. Clinch turned to his
companion, who was standing close beside him, breathing quite audibly,
and leaving an impression on his senses as of a gentle and fragrant
heifer.
“How was all this done?”
The maiden did not know. “It was always here.”
Mr. Clinch reascended the steps. He had quite forgotten his impatience.
Possibly it was the gentle, equable calm of the girl, who, but for her
ready color, did not seem to be moved by anything; perhaps it was the
peaceful repose of this mausoleum of the dead and forgotten wall that
subdued him, but he was quite willing to take the old-fashioned chair
on the terrace which she offered him, and follow her motions with not
altogether mechanical eyes as she drew out certain bottles and glasses
from a mysterious closet in the wall. Mr. Clinch had the weakness of a
majority of his sex in believing that he was a good judge of wine and
women. The latter, as shown in the specimen before him, he would have
invoiced as a fair sample of the middle-class German woman,--healthy,
comfort-loving, home-abiding, the very genius of domesticity. Even in
her virgin outlines the future wholesome matron was already forecast,
from the curves of her broad hips, to the flat lines of her back and
shoulders. Of the wine he was to judge later. THAT required an even more
subtle and unimpassioned intellect.
She placed two bottles before him on the table,--one, the traditional
long-necked, amber-colored Rheinflasche; the other, an old, quaint,
discolored, amphorax-patterned glass jug. The first she opened.
“This,” she said, pointing to the other, “cannot be opened.”
Mr. Clinch paid his respects first to the opened bottle, a good quality
of Niersteiner. With his intellect thus clarified, he glanced at the
other.
“It is from my great-grandfather. It is old as the wall.”
Mr. Clinch examined the bottle attentively. It seemed to have no cork.
Formed of some obsolete, opaque glass, its twisted neck was apparently
hermetically sealed by the same material. The maiden smiled, as she
said,--
“It cannot be opened now without breaking the bottle. It is not good
luck to do so. My grandfather and my father would not.”
But Mr. Clinch was still examining the bottle. Its neck was flattened
towards the mouth; but a close inspection showed it was closed by some
equally hard cement, but not glass.
“If I can open it without breaking the bottle, have I your permission?”
A mischievous glance rested on Mr. Clinch, as the maiden answered,--
“I shall not object; but for what will you do it?”
“To taste it, to try it.”
“You are not afraid?”
There was just enough obvious admiration of Mr. Clinch's audacity in the
maiden's manner to impel him to any risk. His only answer was to take
from his pocket a small steel instrument. Holding the neck of the bottle
firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the steel twice or thrice
around it. A faint rasping, scratching sound was all the wondering girl
heard. Then, with a sudden, dexterous twist of his thumb and finger, to
her utter astonishment he laid the top of the neck, neatly cut off, in
her hand.
“There's a better and more modern bottle than you had before,” he said,
pointing to the cleanly-divided neck, “and any cork will fit it now.”
But the girl regarded him with anxiety. “And you still wish to taste the
wine?”
“With your permission, yes!”
He looked up in her eyes. There was permission: there was something
more, that was flattering to his vanity. He took the wine-glass, and,
slowly and in silence, filled it from the mysterious flask.
The wine fell into the glass clearly, transparently, heavily, but
still and cold as death. There was no sparkle, no cheap ebullition,
no evanescent bubble. Yet it was so clear, that, but for a faint
amber-tinting, the glass seemed empty. There was no aroma, no ethereal
diffusion from its equable surface. Perhaps it was fancy, perhaps it was
from nervous excitement; but a slight chill seemed to radiate from the
still goblet, and bring down the temperature of the terrace. Mr. Clinch
and his companion both insensibly shivered.
But only for a moment. Mr. Clinch raised the glass to his lips. As he
did so, he remembered seeing distinctly, as in a picture before him, the
sunlit terrace, the pretty girl in the foreground,--an amused spectator
of his sacrilegious act,--the outlying ivy-crowned wall, the grass-grown
ditch, the tall factory chimneys rising above the chestnuts, and the
distant poplars that marked the Rhine.
The wine was delicious; perhaps a TRIFLE, only a trifle, heady. He was
conscious of a slight exaltation. There was also a smile upon the girl's
lip and a roguish twinkle in her eye as she looked at him.
“Do you find the wine to your taste?” she asked.
“Fair enough, I warrant,” said Mr. Clinch with ponderous gallantry; “but
methinks 'tis nothing compared with the nectar that grows on those ruby
lips. Nay, by St. Ursula, I swear it!”
No sooner had this solemnly ridiculous speech passed the lips of the
unfortunate man than he would have given worlds to have recalled it. He
knew that he must be intoxicated; that the sentiment and language were
utterly unlike him, he was miserably aware; that he did not even know
exactly what it meant, he was also hopelessly conscious. Yet feeling all
this,--feeling, too, the shame of appearing before her as a man who had
lost his senses through a single glass of wine,--nevertheless he rose
awkwardly, seized her hand, and by sheer force drew her towards him, and
kissed her. With an exclamation that was half a cry and half a laugh,
she fled from him, leaving him alone and bewildered on the terrace.
For a moment Mr. Clinch supported himself against the open window,
leaning his throbbing head on the cold glass. Shame, mortification, an
hysterical half-consciousness of his utter ridiculousness, and yet an
odd, undefined terror of something, by turns possessed him. Was he ever
before guilty of such perfect folly? Had he ever before made such a
spectacle of himself? Was it possible that he, Mr. James Clinch, the
coolest head at a late supper,--he, the American, who had repeatedly
drunk Frenchmen and Englishmen under the table--could be transformed
into a sentimental, stagey idiot by a single glass of wine? He was
conscious, too, of asking himself these very questions in a stilted sort
of rhetoric, and with a rising brutality of anger that was new to
him. And then everything swam before him, and he seemed to lose all
consciousness.
But only for an instant. With a strong effort of his will he again
recalled himself, his situation, his surroundings, and, above all, his
appointment. He rose to his feet, hurriedly descended the terrace-steps,
and, before he well knew how, found himself again on the road. Once
there, his faculties returned in full vigor; he was again himself.
He strode briskly forward toward the ditch he had crossed only a few
moments before, but was suddenly stopped. It was filled with water. He
looked up and down. It was clearly the same ditch; but a flowing stream
thirty feet wide now separated him from the other bank.
The appearance of this unlooked-for obstacle made Mr. Clinch doubt the
full restoration of his faculties. He stepped to the brink of the flood
to bathe his head in the stream, and wash away the last vestiges of his
potations. But as he approached the placid depths, and knelt down he
again started back, and this time with a full conviction of his own
madness; for reflected from its mirror-like surface was a figure he
could scarcely call his own, although here and there some trace of his
former self remained.
His close-cropped hair, trimmed a la mode, had given way to long,
curling locks that dropped upon his shoulders. His neat mustache was
frightfully prolonged, and curled up at the ends stiffly. His Piccadilly
collar had changed shape and texture, and reached--a mass of lace--to a
point midway of his breast! His boots,--why had he not noticed his boots
before?--these triumphs of his Parisian bootmaker, were lost in hideous
leathern cases that reached half way up his thighs. In place of his
former high silk hat, there lay upon the ground beside him the awful
thing he had just taken off,--a mass of thickened felt, flap, feather,
and buckle that weighed at least a stone.
A single terrible idea now took possession of him. He had been “sold,”
“taken in,” “done for.” He saw it all. In a state of intoxication he
had lost his way, had been dragged into some vile den, stripped of his
clothes and valuables, and turned adrift upon the quiet town in this
shameless masquerade. How should he keep his appointment? how inform
the police of this outrage upon a stranger and an American citizen? how
establish his identity? Had they spared his papers? He felt feverishly
in his breast. Ah!--his watch? Yes, a watch--heavy, jewelled,
enamelled--and, by all that was ridiculous, FIVE OTHERS! He ran his
hands into his capacious trunk hose. What was this? Brooches, chains,
finger-rings,--one large episcopal one,--ear-rings, and a handful
of battered gold and silver coins. His papers, his memorandums, his
passport--all proofs of his identity--were gone! In their place was the
unmistakable omnium gatherum of an accomplished knight of the road. Not
only was his personality, but his character, gone forever.
It was a part of Mr. Clinch's singular experience that this last stroke
of ill fortune seemed to revive in him something of the brutal instinct
he had felt a moment before. He turned eagerly about with the intention
of calling some one--the first person he met--to account. But the house
that he had just quitted was gone. The wall! Ah, there it was, no
longer purposeless, intrusive, and ivy-clad, but part of the buttress
of another massive wall that rose into battlements above him. Mr. Clinch
turned again hopelessly toward Sammtstadt. There was the fringe of
poplars on the Rhine, there were the outlying fields lit by the same
meridian sun; but the characteristic chimneys of Sammtstadt were gone.
Mr. Clinch was hopelessly lost.
The sound of a horn breaking the stillness recalled his senses. He now
for the first time perceived that a little distance below him, partly
hidden in the trees, was a queer, tower-shaped structure with chains
and pulleys, that in some strange way recalled his boyish reading.
A drawbridge and portcullis! And on the battlement a figure in a
masquerading dress as absurd as his own, flourishing a banner and
trumpet, and trying to attract his attention.
“Was wollen Sie?”
“I want to see the proprietor,” said Mr. Clinch, choking back his rage.
There was a pause, and the figure turned apparently to consult with
some one behind the battlements. After a moment he reappeared, and in a
perfunctory monotone, with an occasional breathing spell on the trumpet,
began,--
“You do give warranty as a good knight and true, as well as by the bones
of the blessed St. Ursula, that you bear no ill will, secret enmity,
wicked misprise or conspiracy, against the body of our noble lord
and master Von Kolnsche? And you bring with you no ambush, siege, or
surprise of retainers, neither secret warrant nor lettres de cachet, nor
carry on your knightly person poisoned dagger, magic ring, witch-powder,
nor enchanted bullet, and that you have entered into no unhallowed
alliance with the Prince of Darkness, gnomes, hexies, dragons, Undines,
Loreleis, nor the like?”
“Come down out of that, you d----d old fool!” roared Mr. Clinch, now
perfectly beside himself with rage,--“come down, and let me in!”
As Mr. Clinch shouted out the last words, confused cries of recognition
and welcome, not unmixed with some consternation, rose from the
battlements: “Ach Gott!” “Mutter Gott--it is he! It is Jann, Der
Wanderer. It is himself.” The chains rattled, the ponderous drawbridge
creaked and dropped; and across it a medley of motley figures rushed
pellmell. But, foremost among them, the very maiden whom he had left not
ten minutes before flew into his arms, and with a cry of joyful greeting
sank upon his breast. Mr. Clinch looked down upon the fair head and long
braids. It certainly was the same maiden, his cruel enchantress; but
where did she get those absurd garments?
“Willkommen,” said a stout figure, advancing with some authority, and
seizing his disengaged hand, “where hast thou been so long?”
Mr. Clinch, by no means placated, coldly dropped the extended hand.
It was NOT the proprietor he had known. But there was a singular
resemblance in his face to some one of Mr. Clinch's own kin; but who,
he could not remember. “May I take the liberty of asking your name?” he
asked coldly.
The figure grinned. “Surely; but, if thou standest upon punctilio, it
is for ME to ask thine, most noble Freiherr,” said he, winking upon his
retainers. “Whom have I the honor of entertaining?”
“My name is Clinch,--James Clinch of Chicago, Ill.”
A shout of laughter followed. In the midst of his rage and mortification
Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and annoyance flit across the
face of the maiden. He was puzzled, but pressed her hand, in spite of
his late experiences, reassuringly. She made a gesture of silence to
him, and then slipped away in the crowd.
“Schames K'l'n'sche von Schekargo,” mimicked the figure, to the
unspeakable delight of his retainers. “So! THAT is the latest French
style. Holy St. Ursula! Hark ye, nephew! I am not a travelled man. Since
the Crusades we simple Rhine gentlemen have staid at home. But I call
myself Kolnsche of Koln, at your service.”
“Very likely you are right,” said Mr. Clinch hotly, disregarding the
caution of his fair companion; “but, whoever YOU are, I am a stranger
entitled to protection. I have been robbed.”
If Mr. Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry
statement, it could not have been more hilariously received. He paused,
grew confused, and then went on hesitatingly,--
“In place of my papers and credentials I find only these.” And he
produced the jewelry from his pockets.
Another shout of laughter and clapping of hands followed this second
speech; and the baron, with a wink at his retainers, prolonged the
general mirth by saying, “By the way, nephew, there is little doubt but
there has been robbery--somewhere.”
“It was done,” continued Mr. Clinch, hurrying to make an end of his
explanation, “while I was inadvertently overcome with liquor,--drugged
liquor.”
The laughter here was so uproarious that the baron, albeit with tears
of laughter in his own eyes, made a peremptory gesture of silence. The
gesture was peculiar to the baron, efficacious and simple. It consisted
merely in knocking down the nearest laugher. Having thus restored
tranquillity, he strode forward, and took Mr. Clinch by the hand. “By
St. Adolph, I did doubt thee a moment ago, nephew; but this last frank
confession of thine shows me I did thee wrong. Willkommen zu Hause,
Jann, drunk or sober, willcommen zu Cracowen.”
More and more mystified, but convinced of the folly of any further
explanation, Mr. Clinch took the extended hand of his alleged uncle, and
permitted himself to be led into the castle. They passed into a large
banqueting-hall adorned with armor and implements of the chase. Mr.
Clinch could not help noticing, that, although the appointments were
liberal and picturesque, the ventilation was bad, and the smoke from the
huge chimney made the air murky. The oaken tables, massive in carving
and rich in color, were unmistakably greasy; and Mr. Clinch slipped on
a piece of meat that one of the dozen half-wild dogs who were occupying
the room was tearing on the floor. The dog, yelping, ran between the
legs of a retainer, precipitating him upon the baron, who instantly,
with the “equal foot” of fate, kicked him and the dog into a corner.
“And whence came you last?” asked the baron, disregarding the little
contretemps, and throwing himself heavily on an oaken settle, while
he pushed a queer, uncomfortable-looking stool, with legs like a
Siamese-twin-connected double X, towards his companion.
Mr. Clinch, who had quite given himself up to fate, answered
mechanically,--
“Paris.”
The baron winked his eye with unutterable, elderly wickedness. “Ach
Gott! it is nothing to what it was when I was your age. Ah! there was
Manon,--Sieur Manon we used to call her. I suppose she's getting old
now. How goes on the feud between the students and the citizens? Eh? Did
you go to the bal in la Cite?”
Mr. Clinch stopped the flow of those Justice-Shallow-like reminiscences
by an uneasy exclamation. He was thinking of the maiden who had
disappeared so suddenly. The baron misinterpreted his nervousness. “What
ho, within there!--Max, Wolfgang,--lazy rascals! Bring some wine.”
At the baleful word Mr. Clinch started to his feet. “Not for me! Bring
me none of your body-and-soul-destroying poison! I've enough of it!”
The baron stared. The servitors stared also.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Clinch, recalling himself slowly; “but I
fear that Rhine wine does not agree with me.”
The baron grinned. Perceiving, however, that the three servitors grinned
also, he kicked two of them into obscurity, and felled the third to
the floor with his fist. “Hark ye, nephew,” he said, turning to the
astonished Clinch, “give over this nonsense! By the mitre of Bishop
Hatto, thou art as big a fool as he!”
“Hatto,” repeated Clinch mechanically. “What! he of the Mouse Tower?”
“Ay, of the Mouse Tower!” sneered the baron. “I see you know the story.”
“Why am I like him?” asked Mr. Clinch in amazement.
The baron grinned. “HE punished the Rhenish wine as thou dost, without
judgment. He had--”
“The jim-jams,” said Mr. Clinch mechanically again.
The baron frowned. “I know not what gibberish thou sayest by 'jim-jams';
but he had, like thee, the wildest fantasies and imaginings; saw snakes,
toads, rats, in his boots, but principally rats; said they pursued him,
came to his room, his bed--ach Gott!”
“Oh!” said Mr. Clinch, with a sudden return to his firmer self and his
native inquiring habits; “then THAT is the fact about Bishop Hatto of
the story?”
“His enemies made it the subject of a vile slander of an old friend of
mine,” said the baron; “and those cursed poets, who believe everything,
and then persuade others to do so,--may the Devil fly away with
them!--kept it up.”
Here were facts quite to Mr. Clinch's sceptical mind. He forgot himself
and his surroundings.
“And that story of the Drachenfels?” he asked insinuatingly,--“the
dragon, you know. Was he too--”
The baron grinned. “A boar transformed by the drunken brains of the
Bauers of the Siebengebirge. Ach Gott! Ottefried had many a hearty laugh
over it; and it did him, as thou knowest, good service with the nervous
mother of the silly maiden.”
“And the seven sisters of Schonberg?” asked Mr. Clinch persuasively.
“'Schonberg! Seven sisters!' What of them?” demanded the baron sharply.
“Why, you know,--the maidens who were so coy to their suitors,
and--don't you remember?--jumped into the Rhine to avoid them.”
“'Coy? Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors'?” roared the baron,
purple with rage. “Hark ye, nephew! I like not this jesting. Thou
knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy father. How
'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap WE might tell
another story. Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou art where a
petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do other than he did.
And THIS is his reward? Ach Gott! 'Coy!' And THIS, I warrant, is the way
the story is delivered in Paris.”
Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in a
guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the explanation.
Besides, he was on the eve of historic information; he was, as it were,
interviewing the past; and, whether he would ever be able to profit by
the opportunity or not, he could not bear to lose it. “And how about the
Lorelei--is she, too, a fiction?” he asked glibly.
“It was said,” observed the baron sardonically, “that when thou
disappeared with the gamekeeper's daughter at Obercassel--Heaven knows
where!--thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some creature. Ach
Gott! I believe it! But a truce to this balderdash. And so thou wantest
to know of the 'coy' sisters of Schoenberg? Hark ye, Jann, that cousin
of thine is a Schonberg. Call you her 'coy'? Did I not see thy greeting?
Eh? By St. Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call
you her greeting 'coy'?”
Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt that
his explanation would hardly relieve the maiden from deceit, or himself
from weakness. But out of his very perplexity and turmoil a bright idea
was born. He turned to the baron,--
“Then you have no faith in the Rhine legends?”
The baron only replied with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.
“But what if I told you a new one?”
“You?”
“Yes; a part of my experience?”
The baron was curious. It was early in the afternoon, just after dinner.
He might be worse bored.
“I've only one condition,” added Mr. Clinch: “the young lady--I mean, of
course, my cousin--must hear it too.”
“Oh, ay! I see. Of course--the old trick! Well, call the jade. But mark
ye, Sir Nephew, no enchanted maidens and knights. Keep to thyself. Be as
thou art, vagabond Jann Kolnische, knight of the road.--What ho there,
scoundrels! Call the Lady Wilhemina.”
It was the first time Mr. Clinch had heard his fair friend's name; but
it was not, evidently, the first time she had seen him, as the very
decided wink the gentle maiden dropped him testified. Nevertheless,
with hands lightly clasped together, and downcast eyes, she stood before
them.
Mr. Clinch began. Without heeding the baron's scornful grin, he
graphically described his meeting, two years before, with a Lorelei, her
usual pressing invitation, and his subsequent plunge into the Rhine.
“I am free to confess,” added Mr. Clinch, with an affecting glance to
Wilhelmina, “that I was not enamoured of the graces of the lady, but was
actuated by my desire to travel, and explore hitherto unknown regions. I
wished to travel, to visit--”
“Paris,” interrupted the baron sarcastically.
“America,” continued Mr. Clinch.
“What?”--“America.”
“'Tis a gnome-like sounding name, this Meriker. Go on, nephew: tell us
of Meriker.”
With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described his
landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and Hell
Gate, East River, New York. He described the railways, tram-ways,
telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone. An occasional oath broke
from the baron, but he listened attentively; and in a few moments Mr.
Clinch had the raconteur's satisfaction of seeing the vast hall slowly
filling with open-eyed and open-mouthed retainers hanging upon his
words. Mr. Clinch went on to describe his astonishment at meeting on
these very shores some of his own blood and kin. “In fact,” said Mr.
Clinch, “here were a race calling themselves 'Clinch,' but all claiming
to have descended from Kolnische.”
“And how?” sneered the baron.
“Through James Kolnische and Wilhelmina his wife,” returned Mr. Clinch
boldly. “They emigrated from Koln and Crefeld to Philadelphia, where
there is a quarter named Crefeld.” Mr. Clinch felt himself shaky as to
his chronology, but wisely remembered that it was a chronology of the
future to his hearers, and they could not detect an anachronism. With
his eyes fixed upon those of the gentle Wilhelmina, Mr. Clinch now
proceeded to describe his return to his fatherland, but his astonishment
at finding the very face of the country changed, and a city standing
on those fields he had played in as a boy; and how he had wandered
hopelessly on, until he at last sat wearily down in a humble cottage
built upon the ruins of a lordly castle. “So utterly travel-worn and
weak had I become,” said Mr. Clinch, with adroitly simulated pathos,
“that a single glass of wine offered me by the simple cottage maiden
affected me like a prolonged debauch.”
A long-drawn snore was all that followed this affecting climax. The
baron was asleep; the retainers were also asleep. Only one pair of eyes
remained open,--arch, luminous, blue,--Wilhelmina's.
“There is a subterranean passage below us to Linn. Let us fly!” she
whispered.
“But why?”
“They always do it in the legends,” she murmured modestly.
“But your father?”
“He sleeps. Do you not hear him?”
Certainly somebody was snoring. But, oddly enough, it seemed to be
Wilhelmina. Mr. Clinch suggested this to her.
“Fool, it is yourself!”
Mr. Clinch, struck with the idea, stopped to consider. She was right. It
certainly WAS himself.
With a struggle he awoke. The sun was shining. The maiden was looking at
him. But the castle--the castle was gone!
“You have slept well,” said the maiden archly. “Everybody does after
dinner at Sammtstadt. Father has just awakened, and is coming.”
Mr. Clinch stared at the maiden, at the terrace, at the sky, at the
distant chimneys of Sammtstadt, at the more distant Rhine, at the table
before him, and finally at the empty glass. The maiden smiled. “Tell
me,” said Mr. Clinch, looking in her eyes, “is there a secret passage
underground between this place and the Castle of Linn?”
“An underground passage?”
“Ay--whence the daughter of the house fled with a stranger knight.”
“They say there is,” said the maiden, with a gentle blush.
“Can you show it to me?”
She hesitated. “Papa is coming: I'll ask him.”
I presume she did. At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs me of
a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and Kolnische of
Koln; and there is an amusing story extant in the Verein at Sammtstadt,
of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines, who mistook a flask of Cognac
and rock-candy, used for “craftily qualifying” lower grades of wine to
the American standard, for the rarest Rudesheimerberg.
VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION
Outside of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel
with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain
unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people who
pass, without any reciprocal disclosure of their own. The men and women
hurrying by not only do not know they are observed, but, what is worse,
do not even see their own reflection in this hypocritical plane, and
are consequently unable, through its aid, to correct any carelessness
of garb, gait, or demeanor. At first this seems to be taking an unfair
advantage of the human animal, who invariably assumes an attitude
when he is conscious of being under human focus. But I observe that my
neighbors' windows, right and left, have a similar apparatus, that this
custom is evidently a local one, and the locality is German. Being
an American stranger, I am quite willing to leave the morality of the
transaction with the locality, and adapt myself to the custom: indeed,
I had thought of offering it, figuratively, as an excuse for any
unfairness of observation I might make in these pages. But my German
mirrors reflect without prejudice, selection, or comment; and the
American eye, I fear, is but mortal, and like all mortal eyes,
figuratively as well as in that literal fact noted by an eminent
scientific authority, infinitely inferior to the work of the best German
opticians.
And this leads me to my first observation, namely, that a majority of
those who pass my mirror have weak eyes, and have already invoked the
aid of the optician. Why are these people, physically in all else so
much stronger than my countrymen, deficient in eyesight? Or, to omit the
passing testimony of my Spion, and take my own personal experience, why
does my young friend Max, brightest of all schoolboys, who already
wears the cap that denotes the highest class,--why does he shock me by
suddenly drawing forth a pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy
face would be an obvious mocking imitation of the Herr Papa--if German
children could ever, by any possibility, be irreverent? Or why does the
Fraulein Marie, his sister, pink as Aurora, round as Hebe, suddenly
veil her blue eyes with a golden lorgnette in the midst of our polyglot
conversation? Is it to evade the direct, admiring glance of the
impulsive American? Dare I say NO? Dare I say that that frank, clear,
honest, earnest return of the eye, which has on the Continent most
unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under criticism, is quite as
common to her more carefully-guarded, tradition-hedged German sisters?
No, it is not that. Is it any thing in these emerald and opal tinted
skies, which seem so unreal to the American eye, and for the first time
explain what seemed the unreality of German art? in these mysterious yet
restful Rhine fogs, which prolong the twilight, and hang the curtain
of romance even over mid-day? Surely not. Is it not rather, O Herr
Professor profound in analogy and philosophy!--is it not rather
this abominable black-letter, this elsewhere-discarded, uncouth,
slowly-decaying text known as the German Alphabet, that plucks out the
bright eyes of youth, and bristles the gateways of your language with a
chevaux de frise of splintered rubbish? Why must I hesitate whether it
is an accident of the printer's press, or the poor quality of the paper,
that makes this letter a “k” or a “t”? Why must I halt in an emotion or
a thought because “s” and “f” are so nearly alike? Is it not enough that
I, an impulsive American, accustomed to do a thing first, and reflect
upon it afterwards, must grope my way through a blind alley of
substantives and adjectives, only to find the verb of action in an
obscure corner, without ruining my eyesight in the groping?
But I dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active
resentment. This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my Spion,
harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully at a
burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it would seem a
burlesque, but for the poor dog's sad sincerity. Perhaps it is because
I have the barbarian's fondness for dogs, and for their lawless, gentle,
loving uselessness, that I rebel against this unnatural servitude. It
seems as monstrous as if a child were put between the shafts, and made
to carry burdens; and I have come to regard those men and women, who in
the weakest perfunctory way affect to aid the poor brute by laying
idle hands on the barrow behind, as I would unnatural parents.
Pegasus harnessed to the Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a
desecration. I fancy the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the
performance, and, in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to
assume it is PLAY; and I have seen a little “colley” running along,
barking, and endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load
that any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty.
Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to
it. When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the dog,
either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the shafts, or
by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly scatters any such delusion
of even the habit of servitude. The few of his race who do not work in
this ducal city seem to have lost their democratic canine sympathies,
and look upon him with something of that indifferent calm with which
yonder officer eyes the road-mender in the ditch below him. He loses
even the characteristics of species. The common cur and mastiff look
alike in harness. The burden levels all distinctions. I have said that
he was generally sincere in his efforts. I recall but one instance to
the contrary. I remember a young colley who first attracted my attention
by his persistent barking. Whether he did this, as the plough-boy
whistled, “for want of thought,” or whether it was a running protest
against his occupation, I could not determine, until one day I noticed,
that, in barking, he slightly threw up his neck and shoulders, and that
the two-wheeled barrow-like vehicle behind him, having its weight evenly
poised on the wheels by the trucks in the hands of its driver, enabled
him by this movement to cunningly throw the center of gravity and the
greater weight on the man,--a fact which that less sagacious brute never
discerned. Perhaps I am using a strong expression regarding his driver.
It may be that the purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food,
care, and shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in
freedom; becoming a valuable and useful property, he may be cared for
and protected as such (an odd recollection that this argument had been
used forcibly in regard to human slavery in my own country strikes me
here); but his picturesqueness and poetry are gone, and I cannot
help thinking that the people who have lost this gentle, sympathetic,
characteristic figure from their domestic life and surroundings have not
acquired an equal gain through his harsh labors.
To the American eye there is, throughout the length and breadth of
this foreign city, no more notable and striking object than the average
German house-servant. It is not that she has passed my Spion a dozen
times within the last hour,--for here she is messenger, porter, and
commissionnaire, as well as housemaid and cook,--but that she is always
a phenomenon to the American stranger, accustomed to be abused in
his own country by his foreign Irish handmaiden. Her presence is as
refreshing and grateful as the morning light, and as inevitable and
regular. When I add that with the novelty of being well served is
combined the satisfaction of knowing that you have in your household an
intelligent being who reads and writes with fluency, and yet does not
abstract your books, nor criticise your literary composition; who is
cleanly clad, and neat in her person, without the suspicion of having
borrowed her mistress's dresses; who may be good-looking without the
least imputation of coquetry or addition to her followers; who is
obedient without servility, polite without flattery, willing and replete
with supererogatory performance, without the expectation of immediate
pecuniary return, what wonder that the American householder translated
into German life feels himself in a new Eden of domestic possibilities
unrealized in any other country, and begins to believe in a present and
future of domestic happiness! What wonder that the American bachelor
living in German lodgings feels half the terrors of the conjugal future
removed, and rushes madly into love--and housekeeping! What wonder that
I, a long-suffering and patient master, who have been served by the
reticent but too imitative Chinaman; who have been “Massa” to the
childlike but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the
brotherly but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and
have been proudly disregarded by the American aborigine, only in due
time to meet the fate of my countrymen at the hands of Bridget the
Celt,--what wonder that I gladly seize this opportunity to sing the
praises of my German handmaid! Honor to thee, Lenchen, wherever
thou goest! Heaven bless thee in thy walks abroad! whether with that
tightly-booted cavalryman in thy Sunday gown and best, or in blue
polka-dotted apron and bare head as thou trottest nimbly on mine
errands,--errands which Bridget o'Flaherty would scorn to undertake, or,
undertaking, would hopelessly blunder in. Heaven bless thee, child,
in thy early risings and in thy later sittings, at thy festive board
overflowing with Essig and Fett, in the mysteries of thy Kuchen, in the
fulness of thy Bier, and in thy nightly suffocations beneath mountainous
and multitudinous feathers! Good, honest, simple-minded, cheerful,
duty-loving Lenchen! Have not thy brothers, strong and dutiful as thou,
lent their gravity and earnestness to sweeten and strengthen the fierce
youth of the Republic beyond the seas? and shall not thy children
inherit the broad prairies that still wait for them, and discover the
fatness thereof, and send a portion transmuted in glittering shekels
back to thee?
Almost as notable are the children whose round faces have as frequently
been reflected in my Spion. Whether it is only a fancy of mine that
the average German retains longer than any other race his childish
simplicity and unconsciousness, or whether it is because I am more
accustomed to the extreme self-assertion and early maturity of American
children, I know not; but I am inclined to believe that among no
other people is childhood as perennial, and to be studied in such
characteristic and quaint and simple phases as here. The picturesqueness
of Spanish and Italian childhood has a faint suspicion of the pantomime
and the conscious attitudinizing of the Latin races. German children are
not exuberant or volatile: they are serious,--a seriousness, however,
not to be confounded with the grave reflectiveness of age, but only the
abstract wonderment of childhood; for all those who have made a loving
study of the young human animal will, I think, admit that its dominant
expression is GRAVITY, and not playfulness, and will be satisfied
that he erred pitifully who first ascribed “light-heartedness” and
“thoughtlessness” as part of its phenomena. These little creatures I
meet upon the street,--whether in quaint wooden shoes and short woollen
petticoats, or neatly booted and furred, with school knapsacks jauntily
borne upon little square shoulders,--all carry likewise in their round
chubby faces their profound wonderment and astonishment at the big busy
world into which they have so lately strayed. If I stop to speak with
this little maid who scarcely reaches to the top-boots of yonder cavalry
officer, there is less of bashful self-consciousness in her sweet little
face than of grave wonder at the foreign accent and strange ways of
this new figure obtruded upon her limited horizon. She answers honestly,
frankly, prettily, but gravely. There is a remote possibility that I
might bite; and, with this suspicion plainly indicated in her round
blue eyes, she quietly slips her little red hand from mine, and moves
solemnly away. I remember once to have stopped in the street with a fair
countrywoman of mine to interrogate a little figure in sabots,--the
one quaint object in the long, formal perspective of narrow, gray
bastard-Italian facaded houses of a Rhenish German Strasse. The sweet
little figure wore a dark-blue woollen petticoat that came to its knees;
gray woollen stockings covered the shapely little limbs below; and
its very blonde hair, the color of a bright dandelion, was tied in a
pathetic little knot at the back of its round head, and garnished with
an absurd green ribbon. Now, although this gentlewoman's sympathies were
catholic and universal, unfortunately their expression was limited to
her own mother-tongue. She could not help pouring out upon the child the
maternal love that was in her own womanly breast, nor could she withhold
the “baby-talk” through which it was expressed. But, alas! it was in
English. Hence ensued a colloquy, tender and extravagant on the part of
the elder, grave and wondering on the part of the child. But the lady
had a natural feminine desire for reciprocity, particularly in the
presence of our emotion-scorning sex, and as a last resource she emptied
the small silver of her purse into the lap of the coy maiden. It was
a declaration of love, susceptible of translation at the nearest
cake-shop. But the little maid, whose dress and manner certainly did not
betray an habitual disregard of gifts of this kind, looked at the coin
thoughtfully, but not regretfully. Some innate sense of duty, equally
strong with that of being polite to strangers, filled her consciousness.
With the utterly unexpected remark that her father 'did not allow her
to take money', the queer little figure moved away, leaving the two
Americans covered with mortification. The rare American child who could
have done this would have done it with an attitude. This little German
bourgeoise did it naturally. I do not intend to rush to the deduction
that German children of the lower classes habitually refuse pecuniary
gratuities: indeed, I remember to have wickedly suggested to my
companion, that, to avoid impoverishment in a foreign land, she should
not repeat the story nor the experiment. But I simply offer it as a
fact, and to an American, at home or abroad, a novel one.
I owe to these little figures another experience quite as strange.
It was at the close of a dull winter's day,--a day from which all
out-of-door festivity seemed to be naturally excluded: there was a
baleful promise of snow in the air and a dismal reminiscence of it under
foot, when suddenly, in striking contrast with the dreadful bleakness
of the street, a half dozen children, masked and bedizened with cheap
ribbons, spangles, and embroidery, flashed across my Spion. I was quick
to understand the phenomenon. It was the Carnival season. Only the night
before I had been to the great opening masquerade,--a famous affair, for
which this art-loving city is noted, and to which strangers are drawn
from all parts of the Continent. I remember to have wondered if
the pleasure-loving German in America had not broken some of his
conventional shackles in emigration; for certainly I had found the
Carnival balls of the “Lieder Kranz Society” in New York, although
decorous and fashionable to the American taste, to be wild dissipations
compared with the practical seriousness of this native performance, and
I hailed the presence of these children in the open street as a promise
of some extravagance, real, untrammelled, and characteristic. I seized
my hat and--OVERCOAT,--a dreadful incongruity to the spangles that had
whisked by, and followed the vanishing figures round the corner. Here
they were re-enforced by a dozen men and women, fantastically, but not
expensively arrayed, looking not unlike the supernumeraries of some
provincial opera troupe. Following the crowd, which already began to
pour in from the side-streets, in a few moments I was in the broad,
grove-like allee, and in the midst of the masqueraders.
I remember to have been told that this was a characteristic annual
celebration of the lower classes, anticipated with eagerness, and
achieved with difficulty, indeed, often only through the alternative of
pawning clothing and furniture to provide the means for this ephemeral
transformation. I remember being warned, also, that the buffoonery was
coarse, and some of the slang hardly fit for “ears polite.” But I am
afraid that I was not shocked at the prodigality of these poor people,
who purchased a holiday on such hard conditions; and, as to the
coarseness of the performance, I felt that I certainly might go where
these children could.
At first the masquerading figures appeared to be mainly composed of
young girls of ages varying from nine to eighteen. Their costumes--if
what was often only the addition of a broad, bright-colored stripe to
the hem of a short dress could be called a COSTUME--were plain, and
seemed to indicate no particular historical epoch or character. A
general suggestion of the peasant's holiday attire was dominant in
all the costumes. Everybody was closely masked. All carried a short,
gayly-striped baton of split wood, called a Pritsche, which, when struck
sharply on the back or shoulders of some spectator or sister-masker,
emitted a clattering, rasping sound. To wander hand in hand down this
broad allee, to strike almost mechanically, and often monotonously,
at each other with their batons, seemed to be the extent of that wild
dissipation. The crowd thickened. Young men with false noses, hideous
masks, cheap black or red cotton dominoes, soldiers in uniform, crowded
past each other, up and down the promenade, all carrying a Pritsche,
and exchanging blows with each other, but always with the same slow
seriousness of demeanor, which, with their silence, gave the performance
the effect of a religious rite. Occasionally some one shouted: perhaps a
dozen young fellows broke out in song; but the shout was provocative of
nothing, the song faltered as if the singers were frightened at their
own voices. One blithe fellow, with a bear's head on his fur-capped
shoulders, began to dance; but, on the crowd stopping to observe
him seriously, he apparently thought better of it, and slipped away.
Nevertheless, the solemn beating of Pritschen over each other's backs
went on. I remember that I was followed the whole length of the allee by
a little girl scarcely twelve years old, in a bright striped skirt and
black mask, who from time to time struck me over the shoulders with a
regularity and sad persistency that was peculiarly irresistible to
me; the more so, as I could not help thinking that it was not half as
amusing to herself. Once only did the ordinary brusque gallantry of the
Carnival spirit show itself. A man with an enormous pair of horns, like
a half-civilized satyr, suddenly seized a young girl and endeavored to
kiss her. A slight struggle ensued, in which I fancied I detected in the
girl's face and manner the confusion and embarrassment of one who
was obliged to overlook, or seem to accept, a familiarity that was
distasteful, rather than be laughed at for prudishness or ignorance. But
the incident was exceptional. Indeed, it was particularly notable to my
American eyes to find such decorum where there might easily have been
the greatest license. I am afraid that an American mob of this class
would have scarcely been as orderly and civil under the circumstances.
They might have shown more humor; but there would have probably been
more effrontery: they might have been more exuberant; they would
certainly have been drunker. I did not notice a single masquerader
unduly excited by liquor: there was not a word or motion from the
lighter sex that could have been construed into an impropriety. There
was something almost pathetic to me in this attempt to wrest gayety and
excitement out of these dull materials; to fight against the blackness
of that wintry sky, and the stubborn hardness of the frozen soil, with
these painted sticks of wood; to mock the dreariness of their poverty
with these flaunting raiments. It did not seem like them, or rather,
consistent with my idea of them. There was incongruity deeper than their
bizarre externals; a half-melancholy, half-crazy absurdity in their
action, the substitution of a grim spasmodic frenzy for levity, that
rightly or wrongly impressed me. When the increasing gloom of the
evening made their figures undistinguishable, I turned into the first
cross-street. As I lifted my hat to my persistent young friend with the
Pritsche, I fancied she looked as relieved as myself. If, however, I
was mistaken; if that child's pathway through life be strewn with rosy
recollections of the unresisting back of the stranger American; if any
burden, O Gretchen! laid upon thy young shoulders, be lighter for the
trifling one thou didst lay upon mine,--know, then, that I, too, am
content.
And so, day by day, has my Spion reflected the various changing forms
of life before it. It has seen the first flush of spring in the broad
allee, when the shadows of tiny leaflets overhead were beginning to
checker the cool, square flagstones. It has seen the glare and fulness
of summer sunshine and shadow, the flying of November gold through the
air, the gaunt limbs, and stark, rigid, death-like whiteness of winter.
It has seen children in their queer, wicker baby-carriages, old men and
women, and occasionally that grim usher of death, in sable cloak and
cocked hat,--a baleful figure for the wandering invalid tourist to
meet,--who acts as undertaker for this ducal city, and marshals the
last melancholy procession. I well remember my first meeting with this
ominous functionary. It was an early autumnal morning; so early, that
the long formal perspective of the allee, and the decorous, smooth
vanishing-lines of cream-and-gray fronted houses, were unrelieved by a
single human figure. Suddenly a tall black spectre, as theatrical and
as unreal as the painted scenic distance, turned the corner from a
cross-street, and moved slowly towards me. A long black cloak, falling
from its shoulders to its feet, floated out on either side like sable
wings; a cocked hat trimmed with crape, and surmounted by a hearse-like
feather, covered a passionless face; and its eyes, looking neither left
nor right, were fixed fatefully upon some distant goal. Stranger as I
was to this Continental ceremonial figure, there was no mistaking his
functions as the grim messenger, knocking “with equal foot” on every
door; and, indeed, so perfectly did he act and look his role, that there
was nothing ludicrous in the extraordinary spectacle. Facial expression
and dignity of bearing were perfect; the whole man seemed saturated with
the accepted sentiment of his office. Recalling the half-confused
and half-conscious ostentatious hypocrisy of the American sexton, the
shameless absurdities of the English mutes and mourners, I could not
help feeling, that, if it were demanded that Grief and Fate should be
personified, it were better that it should be well done. And it is
one observation of my Spion, that this sincerity and belief is the
characteristic of all Continental functionaries.
It is possible that my Spion has shown me little that is really
characteristic of the people, and the few observations I have made I
offer only as an illustration of the impressions made upon two-thirds of
American strangers in the larger towns of Germany. Assimilation goes on
more rapidly than we are led to imagine. As I have seen my friend Karl,
fresh and awkward in his first uniform, lounging later down the allee
with the blase listlessness of a full-blown militaire, so I have seen
American and English residents gradually lose their peculiarities, and
melt and merge into the general mass. Returning to my Spion after
a flying trip through Belgium and France, as I look down the long
perspective of the Strasse, I am conscious of recalling the same style
of architecture and humanity at Aachen, Brussels, Lille, and Paris, and
am inclined to believe that, even as I would have met, in a journey of
the same distance through a parallel of the same latitude in America, a
greater diversity of type and character, and a more distinct flavor of
locality, even so would I have met a more heterogeneous and picturesque
display from a club window on Fifth Avenue, New York, or Montgomery
Street, San Francisco.