GERMAN COURTSHIP
Once during the winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which
he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do
not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her
attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed
she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had
the rickets. So he speedily gave this up.
Thus he became aware how vastly different are courtship and other
relations between young men and young women in America and in
Germany. He asked himself.
"Are the German ways more civilized?" Certainly, to the Teuton, they
represent a more creditable and becoming evolution. He always
stoutly favors his own customs, and finds little here to discuss.
Even if a rotten morality in his young gods is to be assumed, this
would be proper as in the young gods of the mythologies.
The Teuton marriage refers plainly to property. The language has
prominent terms indicating how espousal means goods with a woman
attached to them. There is scarcely an equivalent in English.
Courtship in the form of natural little raptures that disport in and
beautify enamored companionship in youth, the pure, unfettered,
mystic attraction between the sexes in blossoming time, are
practically unknown to the German social life. The full gloss of
fancy, the velveting of manners, the felicitous fabrication of
innocent emotions into a blessed garment of many colors, find their
development outside the domain of Thor. Such associations have there
no charming playtime, but forthwith make for permanent good or
permanent evil.
Accordingly, for Gard, in his fond inclinations, there was no
experience with Cupids about the Bucher flower garden. Only, as it
were, a sort of rough sledding on broken, jolting ice! And he noted
the comparative absence of such delicate sentiment in German
literature. Aside from Heine, who became French, German letters have
relatively little to offer on this score. The very language
discourages love-making. Since Heine's exile a century ago, the
increasing might of the armored Hohenzollerns had finally almost
killed all this.
Gard was thrown out of gear in another way. Fräulein's lack not only
of amatory complaisance but of social polish or even facility kept
him dubious and disconcerted. She brusquely alternated between a
sisterly tenderness of familiarity, almost exaggerated, only to
follow it by a sudden, disquieting flop over on the side of a
formality as stiff as buckram. She would be as distant as if they
were two boarders having a tiff in a _pension_. These detachments
were not because of anything Kirtley had done or said. They formed
a natural example of Gothic undevelopedness in human relations, the
rude unevenness of beginners.
But, then, he forgave her for this.
"Is she not extremely occupied--full of pursuits? How admirable!"
It shamed him, spurred him on not a little. For days he would only
see her at the generous meals where she exclaimed over her dread of
getting fat. That usually furnishes a German with an excuse for
being helped to more. She dutifully played of an evening in the
family orchestra, yet this was a musical, not a social, happening.
The severe if rich harmonies that were favored, largely with the
idea of drill, created generally an atmosphere of austerity.
She could not understand Gard's offers to carry her umbrella over
her to a class or to bring her a storm coat in case of need. Such
attentiveness meant intrusions almost to be resented. She appeared
to frown upon any kindly little considerations that should have been
agreeable to her or at any rate convenient. She had been brought up
to do everything for herself. There was nothing of the clinging vine
about her. Young German women are not expected to lean upon men in
this wise.
Presents of candy or what-not are looked upon with an inquisitive or
doubtful eye, especially by the parents. For the German girl has no
charming secrets from her father and mother. They must know all,
with immediate conjectures about marriage. Troubling gifts,
consequently, became rather out of the question with Gard.
He feared that Fräulein Elsa might reflect sometimes the feeling of
unfriendliness which he was aware of in the supercilious Rudi. The
latter exhibited a negligent attitude of indifference toward Gard,
though it was cloaked under casualness. There was a sinister air
about the young engineer, and she would be bound to follow
submissively anyone breathing the military ozone.
Under all these unsettling circumstances, Kirtley's uncertain
attachment for the German language did not increase by Peter
Schlemihl strides. Besides, his regular teacher was something like a
wild boar. He had proceeded to dragoon Gard as if he were a lad. And
Herr Keller's person was offensive. He exhaled a smell unpleasant if
scholastic. Dressed in a soiled, shiny, black garb, and with a
bristly mustache and beard which often showed egg of a morning, he
talked blatantly of having been in Paris as a soldier in '70. It was
his one excursion out of Saxony.
Even the German language at such a cost was not very inviting.
Finally Gard received a curt note to the effect that if he were not
more assiduous, the lessons would better end. Herr Keller did not
want to be bothered with triflers.
"Bounced from school!" Kirtley exclaimed. It was the first time. He
took advantage of this opportunity to discontinue.
He could see that his hosts did not blame the professor. Why, he was
capable of forcibly drilling the Teuton language and literature into
a post hole. This doubtless confirmed Kirtley's failure as a student
in their eyes. And this was to be looked for in Americans who think
that they can acquire knowledge and know life by gadding about and
"observing," instead of by book study. The awful German language
seemed doomed to blast Gard's affectionate hopes.
While his burgeoning amorousness met with such blighting
encouragement in the direction of Fräulein Elsa, it encountered
unexpectedly an immense and yearning bosom in another quarter.
Fräulein Wasserhaus, next door, clamored for a mate. With cowlike
simpleness she almost bellowed out for love. Of an age verging on
the precarious she waddled into and out from Villa Elsa with bulging
breasts so bared, under the transparent pretenses of white gauze,
that Frau Bucher declared herself shocked. She said that the
Wasserhaus was trying to be a part of the disgraceful Naked _Kultur_
that had been assailing Germany.
When this bovine soul came to know of Kirtley's presence, she
fastened her consuming desires upon him. She had a brother in
America and actively developed a hankering to go there and be near
him. Yoking up with a Yankee would be a most natural and fitting
state in which to negotiate the Atlantic.
As the Bucher wall was too high for her to hang over in her
languishing ardors, she hung over her gate to offer a book or a
tiger lily to Gard as he passed. Several times when the
pachydermatous Tekla banged her way upstairs with an armful of
utensils in her work, a bouncing compote or other unabashed delicacy
would be tumbling about on a dustpan or a slop basin, bound for the
attic room by the linden tree. Twice a belabored missive accompanied
these little couriers, anxiously quoting some anguishing
sentimentality from one of the household poets writhing amid the
pages of the affecting Gartenlaube.
It was at first so bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the
neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could
grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item
of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished to be
especially entertaining.
"Mein Gott!" the Frau would cry out when going over her troubles and
arduous occupations. "And I've got to get a husband for the
Wasserhaus yet!" The Herr often went into a deafening rage about it.
"Is there no way to keep that lachrymose female out of my house with
her belated calf-love? She annoys the good Herr Kirtley." And he
would toddle out, slamming the door like a clap of thunder.
The family assumed a very self-conscious behavior when the lorn
maiden was mentioned, and were anxious Gard should know that, while
unfortunately she was their neighbor, she was not at all of their
stratum.
"Poor girl!" Gard mused. There were nearly half again as many women
as men in Saxony.
At last he came to know there seemed to be a mystery about Fräulein
Elsa--something which was hidden from him. And a new and deeper
interest was summoned forth from within his breast. Occasionally at
table she was silent as a mile stone. Some days she did not appear
to his sight at all. And then, when he did see her, she evidently
wanted to avoid him. Very true it was that she often pored over the
little volume of Heine in her room without a word to anyone. But, of
a sudden, she would become frankly in evidence again--a floral and
quite superb girl, resolutely "making good," as was her wont.
"What is it?" Gard wondered.
None of the family ever referred to it. Even in his intimate talks
with her mother, whom Gard now and then practiced his German upon as
she was plying her needle, nothing was divulged. There was no young
German coming to the house with regularity. Consequently, could it
be love difficulties? Yet something was wrong. It lent respect to
Elsa, threw enhancement about her.
Gard concluded that the roughness of the Bucher family life
mortified her. It was often well-nigh outlandish. How could she
have so ardently studied the beautiful in music and colors without
realizing this?
But he had not been long enough in Germany to be advised that
knowledge is not expected there to enter into the inner life. What
one is has little in common with what one knows or can dexterously
do. Study does not pass into character. The German, with all his
acquirements, does not look for moral or esthetic effect upon the
heart or soul.
German women esteem the strong fighter, the rugged accomplisher the
boisterous enthusiast, among their men. Whether these are atheistic,
immoral, boorish, cruel, are considerations of secondary importance.
The daughters marry them with little hesitation. Men are men,
supreme, to be adored. Women are to be tolerated, stepped on, sat
upon. Man is the master, woman is the willing servant.