A CASUAL TRAGEDY
One morning early in June when Kirtley, who had been away the
afternoon and evening before, came down to breakfast, he found the
household upset. Something bad had happened. Tekla was gone. Rudi
was not to be seen. Frau had prepared a partial meal and Elsa was
making ready to sweep and dust and tidy up the rooms.
The parents were in a rage. They made no bones about it. Frau
blurted out with German unreservedness:
"I packed Tekla off--the animal. She had no consideration for me.
What do you think, Herr Kirtley? She is going to be a mother. And by
Rudi. Wouldn't you have thought he would have more sense than
this--right here at home--break up my service? He let her get him
into the mess. I have no doubt it was her doings--my poor Rudi. We
have sent him away for a couple of days. I told Tekla to go--be off.
And she was out on the street--like _that_--with her bundle of
belongings under her arm. And here I am with no servant. Ach Gott!
they are all cattle, of course. One has to put up with them."
Herr was in a growling, ferocious state. He blamed Tekla. He blamed
his Frau for not knowing what was going on. It was the woman's
fault. Everything always was. His incomplete breakfast was late.
"Is there nothing left to eat in the house?" he cried out. He took
on a famished and abused air, although he had had his usual six
meals the day before. "Give me at least some cheese and bread!"
In this manner Tekla was roundly denounced for interrupting the
course of family comfort. That she had mortally sinned awakened no
attention, aroused no concern. There was no sympathy expressed for
her in her condition, no responsibility felt for her in her downfall
or anxiety about her future. Whether she would, from this misstep,
have to take to the streets for a living occurred to no one but
Kirtley.
Germans are little wrought up about such questions. There is no
shuddering as from an admitted mortal sin. Natural impulses and
facts are natural impulses and facts. Why should one be squeamish
about them or have soul burnings? In general, carnal desires meet
with no great fastidiousness in the German domestic circle. They are
rather regarded as honest and healthy like desires for food and
drink. The Teuton wife is ashamed of barrenness and considers it
proper for women to be fully sexed in feeling. Sexuality is not
something to be shrunk from, discouraged or denied, but is a candid,
copious law of Nature to be recognized.
When Rudi returned shortly from Leipsic, where it had been deemed
best for him to retire for the moment, he appeared as conceited and
noisy as if nothing had happened. He was not cowed or penitent. His
parents, who had got Villa Elsa in running order and were forgetting
the _contretemps_, almost beamed upon him. He was now a full-fledged
male. Any lingering uncertainties as to his completed manhood had
been effectually removed. His affair was viewed from the standpoint
of potent strength, not lapse from virtue. Young men had their wild
oats to sow. His mistake had been to disturb his own household. Had
it been another household, little heed would have been given.
In the Bucher minds the satisfying net result seemed to be that
another _soldier_ (it was to be hoped) was to be born for the army,
for the Kaiser. Soldiers had to be. Tekla was to fulfill her highest
mission as a German servant girl. She was to become a just and
constituent part of the swelling Empire.
Frau's ideas and information on the subject provided Gard's journal
with some more condensed material. They were talking out by the
garden table.
"What becomes of the German servant girl under such conditions?" he
inquired.
"Oh, she can get into another family and go on as before."
"And the baby? How does she manage with that?"
"She puts it out among poor farm people and pays a little for its
keep. As the mother usually works about in different
localities--sometimes being taken far away by her employers--the
farmer often adopts the baby as it grows up. He can always use more
help. If it's a girl, she is good for the farm as well as the
house. If it's a boy, he becomes a soldier. A boy of this kind makes
the best soldier because he has no parental and no home attachments.
He only knows the barracks and has the officers to obey. He does not
learn who his father is, and the mother becomes practically a
stranger to him as she moves about in the city or country. He is
ready to serve in the colonies or go anywhere or do anything, having
no personal ties to hold him."
"Does not your large army badly demoralize these social conditions?"
"You know, we housewives don't like it much when a new regiment
moves into the vicinity. It makes mothers among our domestics and we
have to change about. Of course, you see, we have more women than
men in Germany and we must have children growing up for the barracks
and the cheap labor market. There seems to be no other way, but it
is often a great nuisance for us housekeepers. Yet there is this to
say: The girls rarely have more than one child by the same man. For
another regiment comes along and there are new relations. The army
is necessarily a floating population and not very responsible for
what it does among us civilians because it _protects_ us."
Kirtley concluded that this accounted for the large number of
detached young men in Germany--in the army and out of it--who
appeared to be so entirely footloose, ready for any mission or task
in any part of the globe. As the two sat there talking about the
question of lovelessness in these relations, Herr Bucher strolled up
from his flower beds and joined them in his Tyrolean jacket of the
chase and big army boots. Gard said,
"We were speaking of affection, Herr Bucher. Why do the Germans have
the ideal of hate when other races are holding up the ideal of
love?"
"Because it is good to hate!" exclaimed the host with rugged
forcefulness as he squatted in a seat. "To hate is strong, manly. It
makes the blood flow. It makes one alert. It is necessary for
keeping up the fighting instinct. To love is a feebleness. It
enervates. You see all the nations that talk of love as the keynote
of life are weak, degenerate. Germany is the most powerful nation in
the world because she hates. When you hate, you eat well, sleep
well, work well, fight well. It is best for the health. When you
love, it is like a sickness and disorganizes and debilitates."
"How do you reconcile that with Christ and His mission of love?"
pursued Gard.
"There is nothing to reconcile. We simply do not admit all that. It
is not practical. Christ was not practical. He had no family. He
made no home. He never even built a house. He did not found a State.
He let the Romans run over Him. How can one live in a cold northern
climate without a house, a nation and an army to protect him? No, it
is not at all practical. Even Christ could not defend Himself. He
was crucified without any resistance, any struggle. To hate is to
struggle and that is the mainspring of action. So one must prepare
himself to struggle successfully. To hate, to cause to be feared,
are the proper motives for life. They _are_ life. Fear is a stronger
and far more universal human motive than love. Therefore we Germans
want to be feared rather than to be loved. So we hate because it
engenders fear in others. To love is already half a surrender and
ends logically in death. With Christ the real victory, the real
heaven aspired to, was in death, not in life."
The Herr had faithfully read Rudi's contemporary German military
philosophers.
Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any
levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except
under a _quasi_ truce or other provisional conditions. To form a
perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It
could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton
reformation took place.
In the midst of these repulsing discords Gard was surprised, on
returning to his room a night or two later, to find by his table a
new red and gold copy of Heine's verse inclosing a sprig of
forget-me-not. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a youthful, copybook
hand:
Immer heller brennt die Licht,
Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht.
Offered to her meadow pupil
By his meadow teacher.
(Ever brighter burns the light
Of my sweet forget-me-not.)
The Germans are not original in love-making. Elsa had read of such
things being done. But it was an admission or advance from her as
unexpected as it was belated. Gard tossed about awhile on his bed,
thinking of it. As he had often acknowledged to himself, he had been
interested in her more than any girl he had yet known.
In the morning, when things were clearer in his consciousness, he
assumed that her enterprising, calculating mother had inspired the
gift. For it seemed to be _apropos_ of nothing in particular at this
unpropitious time, although he had made Elsa little presents during
the fall and early winter. It was evident that the family, after the
arrival of the mirific Jim Deming, had grown somewhat accustomed to
Americans and had at length struck a sentimental attitude.