JIM DEMING OF ERIE, PAY.
The Americanization of the Bucher home Kirtley naturally thought
beyond all attempts. Its detestation of the low-born Yankee, with
only his sorry millions, seemed too deeply planted there, especially
in the brain and bosom of the Frau. Could Villa Elsa have been
transferred to the United States, such a viewpoint might perhaps
have been altered after a time. But this representative boorish
German family, stuck here on the rainy banks of the mid-continent
Elbe and so rooted and clamorous in the presumption that they and
their kind were eclipsing the earth--how impossible of any
conversion?
Gard had at first the idea of getting together some American
statistics and showing the Buchers a few facts. Then he saw this was
hopeless. They accepted nothing that did not come through their own
official channels. And why should he waste time on these obscure
people? Why should he undertake to upset their racial happiness?
Nobody, least of all he, could change their attitude about the
upstart Yankee and his upstart dollars. The Buchers held themselves
too far above mere money and its filth.
But the miracle was, nevertheless, to be accomplished, at least for
awhile, in a manner as simple as it was unlooked for. And this was
what happened.
One day, soon after Gard's disillusioning call on Von Tielitz, he
was grubbing in his attic among the ninth century roots of the
future super-luxuriant Teuton forest, when he heard Tekla's
woodchopper feet pounding their way upstairs. A card was thrust in.
James Alexander Deming, Erie, Pa. Well, of all the world! The next
moment he was there in the room, talkative, airy, sunny, dressed
with the obvious American consciousness of having just left the
hands of his fashionable tailor and haberdasher. Every section of
his black hair and tiny black mustache was plastered down as always
in correct position.
Making himself right at home with his newly acquired
cosmopolitanism, Jim explained how he was already settled in
Dresden for the winter.
"You knew that the more I saw of this old Germany, the more I liked
it. My governor wrote me I could stay if I would try to learn
something and I thought of you. I said to myself, 'Kirtley is a
serious sort of chap. If I light down near him, it will be easier to
learn this confounded language they have got over here, and I will
be able to shine with it in Erie, Pay, and do the old folks proud.'
"So I've got a teacher and a grammar and also a dictionary so big I
can't find anything in it--all ready to loop the loop. But first, of
course, I must run out and see you and see how you are getting on,
swimming in beer. Nothing is too good for us Americans, you know, so
my room in the hotel is right by the royal palace where I can see
the Crown Prince with his sword fall off his horse every morning at
ten. Gad, won't it be something to talk about when I get back to
good old Pennsylwanee?"
Deming's "old man" was possessed of wealth derived from oil wells.
But although Jim's pockets had always been stuffed with money, he
had never been able to get through high school or enter college.
Hang it all, he didn't take to books like Kirtley and all such
intellectual boys. It was the fault of his dad and mam. They had
petted and spoiled him--an only child. It was too bad, but shucks,
he wasn't going to let it interfere with his happiness. So it was
money here and money there, and a host of friends who, like Gard,
could not help being fond of him.
Jim had seen the Kaiser and quaffed out of the largest hogshead on
the Rhine. He had been at a duel at Heidelberg where the chap with a
cut through his cheek asked for a mug of beer and blew the beer out
through the gash. He had swum in Lake Starnberg where Ludwig II had
drowned himself; had seen the café in Munich where the celebrated
Naked Culture was said to have originated; had bribed his way into
the villa at Mayerling where Rudolph of Austria and Marie had ended
that mysterious night of fatality. In short, he had done Germany
pretty thoroughly.
When, by his insistent questionings, he learned about the
comfortable and illuminating German home where Kirtley had installed
himself, and that there was a fine, serious young lady in it with a
harvest of straw-colored hair, he soon confessed, after all, to his
disappointments.
"Kirtley, you are always a lucky dog. Here you are with nice Dutch
people, in the social swim, absorbing German to beat the band. All I
see is chambermaids who shout at me some kind of devilish dialect
that a fellow can't understand. And my chambermaid and I are just at
present at outs. I told her this morning she was the tallest woman I
ever saw. A little of her went such a long ways. As she don't know
any English words, that is the only thing we have agreed about. She
said, Ja wohl! This going to balls and cafés as I'm doing is all
right for local color and all that, but it would tickle dad a lot if
I knew a quiet, decent, respectable German family. And I want to
know a nice, sober German girl who has got yellow, chorus-girl hair
and will steady a fellow down. The proper study of young man is
young woman. I haven't been able to meet any young ladies in this
country. Sometimes I think they have only wenches. And I want some
of the classic Gayty and Schiller stuff too that you can get here in
Loschwitz."
This urgent idea did not appear auspicious to Gard. If Deming got
the run of Villa Elsa, he would unsettle things, interfere with his
own work. Jim was a good boy but he played hob with study. And he
was just the kind of flashy, ignorant Yankee who would prove to
Villa Elsa what it claimed about the race. He would disgust the
Buchers with his showy superficiality and dolessness. Mere money,
everlasting money. More than all he would complicate the situation
with Fräulein. He might upset her somehow, and at least discover his
own secret feelings toward her--feelings that had become more
distraught after the Von Tielitz revelation. In a word, everything
would be helter-skelter.
After Jim had called twice, bent upon becoming intimate with the
Buchers, Gard, as he thought, conceived a clever maneuver. He took
Deming over to call on Fräulein Wasserhaus. Here was an earnest
young woman, lolling on the gate with plenty of time on her hands,
dying for a man. She could teach Deming everything he wanted to
know. She was not antagonistic to Americans as were the Buchers. On
the contrary she was aching to clasp some one of them in her pudgy
arms.
But this stratagem proved a flat failure. When they came away from
her abode, Jim took on a worried look and lit a cigarette.
"Say, see here, old chap. Are you trying to make fun of me? Is this
a joke? I don't want a walrus, thirty years old, with ragbag clothes
that fit her a foot off. She has a gait like an ice wagon. Why, she
couldn't get a job as window-washer in the street car shops of Erie,
Pay."