CHAMPAGNE
At midnight Kirtley saw a remarkable sight. On the stroke of twelve,
loud toasts to Der Tag were suddenly lifted high in air as the
orchestra broke forth with the Wacht am Rhein. An uproar seized the
assembly. "Gott scourge England! Down with France! Deutschland über
Alles!" In a twinkling it was a crowd mad for war. Beer mugs were
smashed, various objects of apparel were flung far and wide.
Improvised orators--students--mounted tables and began crying for
vengeance on the world in speeches which, in the hubbub, did not get
much beyond preliminary exclamations.
Hatred of Great Britain stood out above it all. How long must the
Fatherland be held in check? "Der Kaiser! Hoch der Kaiser!" The
popular national frenzy had in this spot ripped off any bounds.
Burn, sack, violate, kill--Gard heard the intimations--the
threats--of all such frightfulness. In the furor he stood up on his
table to get a better view of the extraordinary demonstration. It
sounded fateful, terrible, like descriptions recited of the French
Revolution. He was almost awestruck. At its height he feared
personal violence for himself. He had sometimes been taken for a
Britisher.
Anderson was right again. The Teutons lusted for war now. What a
spectacle! The old, old German hate. This very lowly class of
people--waiters and waitresses--had nothing, would be the very first
to face severe hardships, and the men would suffer more than any at
the front. They would all be mainly the ones to go hungry, be cold,
be killed. But here appeared the cannon fodder demanding to be shot
down in its craze for Triumphant Germany. It was hoarse for Victory
or Destruction. It was drunk with its physical power. These soldiers
were angrily impatient to be let loose like hellhounds, from the
sullen fastnesses of mountains and swamps behind the Rhine, upon the
Christian populations beyond in the great plains of civilization.
When the tempest had passed and its activities were dwindling into
the renewed whirlwinds of the dance, Gard resumed his seat, his head
beginning to swim a little. At last his doubting eyes were as if
unsealed. A Vandal tribe, a great and powerful Vandal tribe, still
lived in the world. It was feeding on Conflict--the food of its
ancient bellicose gods.
How was it, indeed, that our trained American observers, men who had
been educated in Germany and those who had not, never saw anything
of this danger that was boiling in the breasts of even the humblest
classes of Teutons? Yes, Anderson was correct. The Germans were,
after all, frank enough about it. All was spontaneous and bold.
Egged on by their military, political, educational, religious
masters, the populace could easily, at any time, work themselves up
like this into a frantic state about conquest. And yet Americans
heard nothing of it. It was as if their channels of information were
subsidized under German authority.
At one o'clock supper time came and Gard ordered. There were Fritzi
and another girl and two young men--all very profuse in their
appreciation of his hospitality. The popping of a few bottles of
cheap champagne sounded in his ears. He was in the swing of the
excitement and could not be outdone. His brand was French, of a fine
quality. It exhilarated his brain far above the plain, distorted
commonplaces of Loschwitz.
After supper the real frolic set in. The true devotees now alone
remained. They began doing fancy twists, with legs out far and wide.
Vests came off, with collars and ties, and feminine charms became as
familiar as an old story that is read too often to have much meaning
for the senses. To Gard it all now appeared seemly enough, like an
opera peasant ballet whose frank rusticities were excused under the
inspiration of the music.
Fritzi's hair floated loosely over her shoulders. It looked to him
even brighter than Elsa's. Her snug, many-colored bodice became
partly unlaced and she had kicked off her tight slippers under
Gard's table. In their heated condition many of the other waitresses
were dancing in their unshod feet. He thought it very natural and
pleasing when Fritzi rushed up with her heirloom of silk stockings
which she had removed early in the evening. They had been her
grandmother's who had worn them at some grand baron's wedding long
ago--the sole tradition and distinction connected with Fritzi's
lineage. One of her friends had been robbed in the dressing room and
she was afraid to trust these precious articles there longer. She
made sure that Gard had tucked them in his pocket for safekeeping.
As she hurried to rejoin the circles, he saw that she had worn
through the bottoms of her dancing hose.
Whenever that feeling of discomfort, which he had been conscious of
early that morning, surged for a moment through him, a sip of
champagne brought quick relief and gilded the scene and his spirits
with its necromancy. He felt dizzy but blissful. He became
drowsy.... He had sunk into a dream, glorious then ugly, foolish but
haunting.
He dreamed he was an armored knight of the time of Charlemagne. He
was astride a steed caparisoned for battle, and was riding southward
from the Alps in the blazing sunlight, along a white road amid what
he supposed were the gardened plains of Lombardy. By his side, in
similar array, rode a lovely blond princess of the North with a
wonderful luxuriance of hair--some daughter of the Frankish race of
fierce and resplendent Brunnhildas or Fredegondas.
She at last became wearied of her heavy armor, the length of the
journey and the burning sun. He assisted in extricating her from her
coat of mail, and took her over into his arms asleep, letting her
armor ride upright on her charger save for the helmet which he
fastened to his pommel. As the horses kept onward he held with
delight her lightsome body, with her miraculous tresses entwining
him as she slumbered. He held her embraced in tenderness, for had
not she--a princess--trusted him and gone away with him alone?
He had not thus ridden with her far, before his eyes, alert in every
direction for the treacherous enemies of the land, beheld with
gaping fright an immense black serpent, brilliant with scales
glistening in the scintillating air, slowly uncoiling out of her
headless panoply that was still riding bolt upright by his side. He
glared down at her in the certainty that she had turned into a twin
serpent at his breast. She lay there still in the seductive form of
a woman. But she had turned loathsome to his touch. He hurled her to
the ground and the next moment was flying on foot, afield, in
horror from the spot.
And he recalled in his dream how woman and the snake have been
allied in legend, religion and history--how they have ever been
identified in the minds of men. His beautiful queen had been at one
with the serpent in that suit of metal. Or was it only Elsa?--was it
only Fritzi?--with their amber hair?
For what seemed a very long time he was fitfully trying to
decide--when he slowly made out that brawny Frau Bucher stood over
him.