MILITARY BLOCKHEADS
Gard's attentions to Elsa continued intermittently, and as if
detached, on their unadvancing course. He had, however, reached the
stage of playing piano duets with her. This is always hopeful.
Occasionally they rambled through Schubert's little Vienna love
waltzes and other selections that could top off an evening with
melodies of a sprightly and sentimental nature. He felt he was
becoming acquainted with her in a way he otherwise could not. She
was more cheerful at these times, exhilarated by the music.
He had learned a large part of his playing by ear. Reading at sight
was a fresh experience. She corrected his fingering while helping
fill out his conversational vocabulary. It was certainly most
agreeable to have Fräulein take his fingers in her warm, plump,
flexible hand with conscientious authority and show him the method
of the Dresden Conservatoire.
Think of a young and lustrous miss being able to instruct him like a
veteran! He had never considered American girls in such a light--had
never expected to learn anything of profitable skill from them.
Elsa, for her part, regarded it as a curious and amusing experience
to watch this tall man playing like a boy. The musical Germans she
knew were adept at some instrument.
He formed the habit of adding _en_, or its variants, to the English
equivalent of the German word he could not think of, and she seemed
to be struck by this as a very original fashion of eliciting
information. On one occasion at the piano they heard the entrance
bell below clang, announcing a visitor, and Gard, hastening to
disappear upstairs, exclaimed:
"Wir müssen--wir müssen--_stopfen_!"
The word for stop would not come to him. Fräulein blushed and
snickered and ran off to tell her mother about Herr Kirtley and his
German. He was frightened. What absurdity had he uttered? He got to
his dictionary as soon as he could and found he had said--We must
darn stockings!
The incident nearly always put Elsa in good humor. She doubtless
considered Yankees an odd folk. How could they expect to become
civilized with their rudimentary attainments? Must he not be seeming
to her a sort of freak?...
But, for the most part, she continued to hold him aloof, and he
concluded the reason lay in the mystery which shadowed her young
life and to which he could trace no clue. What could it frankly be
that sent her to her room and to Heine? The beginning of the answer
seemed to come at last in the form of a youth who suddenly soared in
at Villa Elsa.
Herr Friedrich von Tielitz-Leibach was a composer and a music
director. He was the son of a neighbor who had moved away, and the
musical Buchers doted on him as one with a shining future. Kirtley
had often heard them refer to Friedrich as to so many of their
friends of whom he knew nothing.
When Friedrich called, at very rare intervals, it was always a
wonderful day. The steady, stolid routine of the home became
perturbed, gladdened. He was a German of Hungarian extraction, and
the Magyar blood gave him a dash and sparkle. He was tall, very
thin, with the intellectual look that black-rimmed glasses produce.
His eyes harmonized in color with the black shock of tossing hair
that set off a distinguished appearance. And, like a traditional
votary of music, he wore a great black cloak swinging around him
with an operatic air, giving the impression that he was just going
to or coming from the theater.
Highly agitated, gilded with flattery, readily acquainted, he
bubbled over promptly in confidences and intimate allusions. He was
ever brimming with the freshest gossip of himself and his exalted
career; and his personal experiences, he assumed, were bound to be
unique and entertaining.
Making friends with everyone, he insisted on calling on Gard up in
the attic room, pleased to welcome such an "excellent person"--as he
had heard downstairs--to the fold of the family. But did they not
lead such dull, stagnant, imbecile lives, moored here in this
stodgy, out-of-the-world suburb, where so many idiots live who
wonder how the world can come to an end when it's round? Friedrich
truly hoped Herr Kirtley would not be bored to death.
To-day the musician had finished with his final military examination
and was at last free from ever having to serve. He made a diverting
story of it and had hastened to the Villa to recount the
congratulatory news.
"I had to report this morning for military service, just having got
back to Dresden. So I went to the Platz and there sat an officer as
big as a hogshead. And I hope not as full. He began treating me as
if I were a truant school boy. 'Stand up! Sit down! Stand up again!'
So the examination commenced. I knew I was not fit for the army. I
did not want to go. I hate it. But they were after me. He said:
"'Take off your glasses!' I removed them. He said:
"'What is that letter off there?' Mein Gott! it looked as far off as
Pillnitz. It was my left eye out of which I had seen nothing since I
was a baby.
"'I see nothing,' I said. He yelled:
"'You can!' Then I said:
"'I can't!' Then he roared out:
"'Why can't you?'
"'Because I am blind in it!' He glared at me as if I were a
perjurer.
"'It is blind and you can see nothing out of it?'
"And now I was getting out of patience with this blockhead. Blind
and can't see out of it! They put the blockheads in the army because
there is no other place for them. I think that must be the reason
why there are more synonyms for blockhead in the German language
than in any other--we have the largest army. I said:
"'Of course I can't see anything out of it because it's blind,
you---- ' I was just on the point of adding 'fool' when I stopped
myself in time. It was the military--the august _military_. One must
hold his peace before the magnificent military. He thought I was
cheating about my eye because I did not want to march to Moscow, to
Paris. And I don't want to march to Moscow or Paris. They're so far.
"So this stupid _Kerl_ took me over to a higher officer and still
another. They sat there as stiff and self-complacent as wooden
saints in a plaster church. They too shouted at me They were so
suspicious, although I had never had the pleasure of meeting any of
them before.
"'You say you are blind in one eye and can't see out of it?'
"I screamed, 'No, no, no!' They thought I might be going insane.
They examined my eye, my glasses, and tried all kinds of tests to
try to fool my poor eye. But it remained my faithful friend, and
they were mad. And I was just as mad and ready to shriek at
them--'Blind! Blind! Blind!' I was losing half a day for nothing
over their stupidities.
"Then the _Dummkopfen_ began to enter it up on their official
blotters. That seemed to take forever too. I was nearly exhausted.
They solemnly wrote me down as blind in one eye and cannot see out
of it. And at last, Gott sei Dank! they let me go, glowering at me
as if they were still sure I was somehow tricking them. And here I
am--alive!"
Friedrich's ludicrous recital, embellished by a hundred gestures and
poses, had raised a guffaw even in Villa Elsa.