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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4646.txt b/4646.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..304f159 --- /dev/null +++ b/4646.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16027 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Their Silver Wedding Journey, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Their Silver Wedding Journey + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #4646] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY. + +By William Dean Howells + + +Part I. + +[NOTE: Several chapter heading numerals are out of order or missing in +this 1899 edition, however the text is all present in the three volumes. +D.W.] + + + +I. + +"You need the rest," said the Business End; "and your wife wants you to +go, as well as your doctor. Besides, it's your Sabbatical year, and you, +could send back a lot of stuff for the magazine." + +"Is that your notion of a Sabbatical year?" asked the editor. + +"No; I throw that out as a bait to your conscience. You needn't write a +line while you're gone. I wish you wouldn't for your own sake; although +every number that hasn't got you in it is a back number for me." + +"That's very nice of you, Fulkerson," said the editor. "I suppose you +realize that it's nine years since we took 'Every Other Week' from +Dryfoos?" + +"Well, that makes it all the more Sabbatical," said Fulkerson. "The two +extra years that you've put in here, over and above the old style +Sabbatical seven, are just so much more to your credit. It was your right +to go, two years ago, and now it's your duty. Couldn't you look at it in +that light?" + +"I dare say Mrs. March could," the editor assented. "I don't believe she +could be brought to regard it as a pleasure on any other terms." + +"Of course not," said Fulkerson. "If you won't take a year, take three +months, and call it a Sabbatical summer; but go, anyway. You can make up +half a dozen numbers ahead, and Tom, here, knows your ways so well that +you needn't think about 'Every Other Week' from the time you start till +the time you try to bribe the customs inspector when you get back. I can +take a hack at the editing myself, if Tom's inspiration gives out, and +put a little of my advertising fire into the thing." He laid his hand on +the shoulder of the young fellow who stood smiling by, and pushed and +shook him in the liking there was between them. "Now you go, March! Mrs. +Fulkerson feels just as I do about it; we had our outing last year, and +we want Mrs. March and you to have yours. You let me go down and engage +your passage, and--" + +"No, no!" the editor rebelled. "I'll think about it;" but as he turned to +the work he was so fond of and so weary of, he tried not to think of the +question again, till he closed his desk in the afternoon, and started to +walk home; the doctor had said he ought to walk, and he did so, though he +longed to ride, and looked wistfully at the passing cars. + +He knew he was in a rut, as his wife often said; but if it was a rut, it +was a support too; it kept him from wobbling: She always talked as if the +flowery fields of youth lay on either side of the dusty road he had been +going so long, and he had but to step aside from it, to be among the +butterflies and buttercups again; he sometimes indulged this illusion, +himself, in a certain ironical spirit which caressed while it mocked the +notion. They had a tacit agreement that their youth, if they were ever to +find it again, was to be looked for in Europe, where they met when they +were young, and they had never been quite without the hope of going back +there, some day, for a long sojourn. They had not seen the time when they +could do so; they were dreamers, but, as they recognized, even dreaming +is not free from care; and in his dream March had been obliged to work +pretty steadily, if not too intensely. He had been forced to forego the +distinctly literary ambition with which he had started in life because he +had their common living to make, and he could not make it by writing +graceful verse, or even graceful prose. He had been many years in a +sufficiently distasteful business, and he had lost any thought of leaving +it when it left him, perhaps because his hold on it had always been +rather lax, and he had not been able to conceal that he disliked it. At +any rate, he was supplanted in his insurance agency at Boston by a +subordinate in his office, and though he was at the same time offered a +place of nominal credit in the employ of the company, he was able to +decline it in grace of a chance which united the charm of congenial work +with the solid advantage of a better salary than he had been getting for +work he hated. It was an incredible chance, but it was rendered +appreciably real by the necessity it involved that they should leave +Boston, where they had lived all their married life, where Mrs. March as +well as their children was born, and where all their tender and familiar +ties were, and come to New York, where the literary enterprise which +formed his chance was to be founded. + +It was then a magazine of a new sort, which his business partner had +imagined in such leisure as the management of a newspaper syndicate +afforded him, and had always thought of getting March to edit. The +magazine which is also a book has since been realized elsewhere on more +or less prosperous terms, but not for any long period, and 'Every Other +Week' was apparently--the only periodical of the kind conditioned for +survival. It was at first backed by unlimited capital, and it had the +instant favor of a popular mood, which has since changed, but which did +not change so soon that the magazine had not time to establish itself in +a wide acceptance. It was now no longer a novelty, it was no longer in +the maiden blush of its first success, but it had entered upon its second +youth with the reasonable hope of many years of prosperity before it. In +fact it was a very comfortable living for all concerned, and the Marches +had the conditions, almost dismayingly perfect, in which they had often +promised themselves to go and be young again in Europe, when they +rebelled at finding themselves elderly in America. Their daughter was +married, and so very much to her mother's mind that she did not worry +about her, even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a wild +frontier town to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon as he +left college, had taken hold on 'Every Other Week', under his father's +instruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him Fulkerson's +praise as a chip of the old block. These two liked each other, and worked +into each other's hands as cordially and aptly as Fulkerson and March had +ever done. It amused the father to see his son offering Fulkerson the +same deference which the Business End paid to seniority in March himself; +but in fact, Fulkerson's forehead was getting, as he said, more +intellectual every day; and the years were pushing them all along +together. + +Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one day he fell down in it. +He had a long sickness, and when he was well of it, he was so slow in +getting his grip of work again that he was sometimes deeply discouraged. +His wife shared his depression, whether he showed or whether he hid it, +and when the doctor advised his going abroad, she abetted the doctor with +all the strength of a woman's hygienic intuitions. March himself +willingly consented, at first; but as soon as he got strength for his +work, he began to temporize and to demur. He said that he believed it +would do him just as much good to go to Saratoga, where they always had +such a good time, as to go to Carlsbad; and Mrs. March had been obliged +several times to leave him to his own undoing; she always took him more +vigorously in hand afterwards. + + + + +II. + +When he got home from the 'Every Other Week' office, the afternoon of +that talk with the Business End, he wanted to laugh with his wife at +Fulkerson's notion of a Sabbatical year. She did not think it was so very +droll; she even urged it seriously against him, as if she had now the +authority of Holy Writ for forcing him abroad; she found no relish of +absurdity in the idea that it was his duty to take this rest which had +been his right before. + +He abandoned himself to a fancy which had been working to the surface of +his thought. "We could call it our Silver Wedding Journey, and go round +to all the old places, and see them in the reflected light of the past." + +"Oh, we could!" she responded, passionately; and he had now the delicate +responsibility of persuading her that he was joking. + +He could think of nothing better than a return to Fulkerson's absurdity. +"It would be our Silver Wedding Journey just as it would be my Sabbatical +year--a good deal after date. But I suppose that would make it all the +more silvery." + +She faltered in her elation. "Didn't you say a Sabbatical year yourself?" +she demanded. + +"Fulkerson said it; but it was a figurative expression." + +"And I suppose the Silver Wedding Journey was a figurative expression +too!" + +"It was a notion that tempted me; I thought you would enjoy it. Don't you +suppose I should be glad too, if we could go over, and find ourselves +just as we were when we first met there?" + +"No; I don't believe now that you care anything about it." + +"Well, it couldn't be done, anyway; so that doesn't matter." + +"It could be done, if you were a mind to think so. And it would be the +greatest inspiration to you. You are always longing for some chance to do +original work, to get away from your editing, but you've let the time +slip by without really trying to do anything; I don't call those little +studies of yours in the magazine anything; and now you won't take the +chance that's almost forcing itself upon you. You could write an original +book of the nicest kind; mix up travel and fiction; get some love in." + +"Oh, that's the stalest kind of thing!" + +"Well, but you could see it from a perfectly new point of view. You could +look at it as a sort of dispassionate witness, and treat it +humorously--of course it is ridiculous--and do something entirely fresh." + +"It wouldn't work. It would be carrying water on both shoulders. The +fiction would kill the travel, the travel would kill the fiction; the +love and the humor wouldn't mingle any more than oil and vinegar." + +"Well, and what is better than a salad?" + +"But this would be all salad-dressing, and nothing to put it on." She was +silent, and he yielded to another fancy. "We might imagine coming upon +our former selves over there, and travelling round with them--a wedding +journey 'en partie carree'." + +"Something like that. I call it a very poetical idea," she said with a +sort of provisionality, as if distrusting another ambush. + +"It isn't so bad," he admitted. "How young we were, in those days!" + +"Too young to know what a good time we were having," she said, relaxing +her doubt for the retrospect. "I don't feel as if I really saw Europe, +then; I was too inexperienced, too ignorant, too simple. I would like to +go, just to make sure that I had been." He was smiling again in the way +he had when anything occurred to him that amused him, and she demanded, +"What is it?" + +"Nothing. I was wishing we could go in the consciousness of people who +actually hadn't been before--carry them all through Europe, and let them +see it in the old, simple-hearted American way." + +She shook her head. "You couldn't! They've all been!" + +"All but about sixty or seventy millions," said March. + +"Well, those are just the millions you don't know, and couldn't imagine." + +"I'm not so sure of that." + +"And even if you could imagine them, you couldn't make them interesting. +All the interesting ones have been, anyway." + +"Some of the uninteresting ones too. I used, to meet some of that sort +over there. I believe I would rather chance it for my pleasure with those +that hadn't been." + +"Then why not do it? I know you could get something out of it." + +"It might be a good thing," he mused, "to take a couple who had passed +their whole life here in New York, too poor and too busy ever to go; and +had a perfect famine for Europe all the time. I could have them spend +their Sunday afternoons going aboard the different boats, and looking up +their accommodations. I could have them sail, in imagination, and +discover an imaginary Europe, and give their grotesque misconceptions of +it from travels and novels against a background of purely American +experience. We needn't go abroad to manage that. I think it would be +rather nice." + +"I don't think it would be nice in the least," said Mrs. March, "and if +you don't want to talk seriously, I would rather not talk at all." + +"Well, then, let's talk about our Silver Wedding Journey." + +"I see. You merely want to tease and I am not in the humor for it." + +She said this in a great many different ways, and then she was really +silent. He perceived that she was hurt; and he tried to win her back to +good-humor. He asked her if she would not like to go over to Hoboken and +look at one of the Hanseatic League steamers, some day; and she refused. +When he sent the next day and got a permit to see the boat; she consented +to go. + + + + +III. + +He was one of those men who live from the inside outward; he often took a +hint for his actions from his fancies; and now because he had fancied +some people going to look at steamers on Sundays, he chose the next +Sunday himself for their visit to the Hanseatic boat at Hoboken. To be +sure it was a leisure day with him, but he might have taken the afternoon +of any other day, for that matter, and it was really that invisible +thread of association which drew him. + +The Colmannia had been in long enough to have made her toilet for the +outward voyage, and was looking her best. She was tipped and edged with +shining brass, without and within, and was red-carpeted and white-painted +as only a ship knows how to be. A little uniformed steward ran before the +visitors, and showed them through the dim white corridors into typical +state-rooms on the different decks; and then let them verify their first +impression of the grandeur of the dining-saloon, and the luxury of the +ladies' parlor and music-room. March made his wife observe that the +tables and sofas and easy-chairs, which seemed so carelessly scattered +about, were all suggestively screwed fast to the floor against rough +weather; and he amused himself with the heavy German browns and greens +and coppers in the decorations, which he said must have been studied in +color from sausage, beer, and spinach, to the effect of those large +march-panes in the roof. She laughed with him at the tastelessness of the +race which they were destined to marvel at more and more; but she made +him own that the stewardesses whom they saw were charmingly like +serving-maids in the 'Fliegende Blatter'; when they went ashore she +challenged his silence for some assent to her own conclusion that the +Colmannia was perfect. + +"She has only one fault," he assented. "She's a ship." + +"Yes," said his wife, "and I shall want to look at the Norumbia before I +decide." + +Then he saw that it was only a question which steamer they should take, +and not whether they should take any. He explained, at first gently and +afterwards savagely, that their visit to the Colmannia was quite enough +for him, and that the vessel was not built that he would be willing to +cross the Atlantic in. + +When a man has gone so far as that he has committed himself to the +opposite course in almost so many words; and March was neither surprised +nor abashed when he discovered himself, before they reached home, +offering his wife many reasons why they should go to Europe. She answered +to all, No, he had made her realize the horror of it so much that she was +glad to give it up. She gave it up, with the best feeling; all that she +would ask of him was that he should never mention Europe to her again. +She could imagine how much he disliked to go, if such a ship as the +Colmannia did not make him want to go. + +At the bottom of his heart he knew that he had not used her very well. He +had kindled her fancy with those notions of a Sabbatical year and a +Silver Wedding Journey, and when she was willing to renounce both he had +persisted in taking her to see the ship, only to tell her afterwards that +he would not go abroad on any account. It was by a psychological juggle +which some men will understand that he allowed himself the next day to +get the sailings of the Norumbia from the steamship office; he also got a +plan of the ship showing the most available staterooms, so that they +might be able to choose between her and the Colmannia from all the facts. + + + + +IV. + +From this time their decision to go was none the less explicit because so +perfectly tacit. + +They began to amass maps and guides. She got a Baedeker for Austria and +he got a Bradshaw for the continent, which was never of the least use +there, but was for the present a mine of unavailable information. He got +a phrase-book, too, and tried to rub up his German. He used to read +German, when he was a boy, with a young enthusiasm for its romantic +poetry, and now, for the sake of Schiller and Uhland and Heine, he held +imaginary conversations with a barber, a bootmaker, and a banker, and +tried to taste the joy which he had not known in the language of those +poets for a whole generation. He perceived, of course, that unless the +barber, the bootmaker, and the banker answered him in terms which the +author of the phrase-book directed them to use, he should not get on with +them beyond his first question; but he did not allow this to spoil his +pleasure in it. In fact, it was with a tender emotion that he realized +how little the world, which had changed in everything else so greatly, +had changed in its ideal of a phrase-book. + +Mrs. March postponed the study of her Baedeker to the time and place for +it; and addressed herself to the immediate business of ascertaining the +respective merits of the Colmannia and Norumbia. She carried on her +researches solely among persons of her own sex; its experiences were +alone of that positive character which brings conviction, and she valued +them equally at first or second hand. She heard of ladies who would not +cross in any boat but the Colmannia, and who waited for months to get a +room on her; she talked with ladies who said that nothing would induce +them to cross in her. There were ladies who said she had twice the motion +that the Norumbia had, and the vibration from her twin screws was +frightful; it always was, on those twin-screw boats, and it did not +affect their testimony with Mrs. March that the Norumbia was a twin-screw +boat too. It was repeated to her in the third or fourth degree of +hear-say that the discipline on the Colmannia was as perfect as that on +the Cunarders; ladies whose friends had tried every line assured her that +the table of the Norumbia was almost as good as the table of the French +boats. To the best of the belief of lady witnesses still living who had +friends on board, the Colmannia had once got aground, and the Norumbia +had once had her bridge carried off by a tidal wave; or it might be the +Colmannia; they promised to ask and let her know. Their lightest word +availed with her against the most solemn assurances of their husbands, +fathers, or brothers, who might be all very well on land, but in +navigation were not to be trusted; they would say anything from a +reckless and culpable optimism. She obliged March all the same to ask +among them, but she recognized their guilty insincerity when he came home +saying that one man had told him you could have played croquet on the +deck of the Colmannia the whole way over when he crossed, and another +that he never saw the racks on in three passages he had made in the +Norumbia. + +The weight of evidence was, he thought, in favor of the Norumbia, but +when they went another Sunday to Hoboken, and saw the ship, Mrs. March +liked her so much less than the Colmannia that she could hardly wait for +Monday to come; she felt sure all the good rooms on the Colmannia would +be gone before they could engage one. + +From a consensus of the nerves of all the ladies left in town so late in +the season, she knew that the only place on any steamer where your room +ought to be was probably just where they could not get it. If you went +too high, you felt the rolling terribly, and people tramping up and down +on the promenade under your window kept you awake the whole night; if you +went too low, you felt the engine thump, thump, thump in your head the +whole way over. If you went too far forward, you got the pitching; if you +went aft, on the kitchen side, you got the smell of the cooking. The only +place, really, was just back of the dining-saloon on the south side of +the ship; it was smooth there, and it was quiet, and you had the sun in +your window all the way over. He asked her if he must take their room +there or nowhere, and she answered that he must do his best, but that she +would not be satisfied with any other place. + +In his despair he went down to the steamer office, and took a room which +one of the clerks said was the best. When he got home, it appeared from +reference to the ship's plan that it was the very room his wife had +wanted from the beginning, and she praised him as if he had used a wisdom +beyond his sex in getting it. + +He was in the enjoyment of his unmerited honor when a belated lady came +with her husband for an evening call, before going into the country. At +sight of the plans of steamers on the Marches' table, she expressed the +greatest wonder and delight that they were going to Europe. They had +supposed everybody knew it, by this time, but she said she had not heard +a word of it; and she went on with some felicitations which March found +rather unduly filial. In getting a little past the prime of life he did +not like to be used with too great consideration of his years, and he did +not think that he and his wife were so old that they need be treated as +if they were going on a golden wedding journey, and heaped with all sorts +of impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much and being so much +the better for the little outing! Under his breath, he confounded this +lady for her impudence; but he schooled himself to let her rejoice at +their going on a Hanseatic boat, because the Germans were always so +careful of you. She made her husband agree with her, and it came out that +he had crossed several times on both the Colmannia and the Norumbia. He +volunteered to say that the Colmannia, was a capital sea-boat; she did +not have her nose under water all the time; she was steady as a rock; and +the captain and the kitchen were simply out of sight; some people did +call her unlucky. + +"Unlucky?" Mrs. March echoed, faintly. "Why do they call her unlucky?" + +"Oh, I don't know. People will say anything about any boat. You know she +broke her shaft, once, and once she got caught in the ice." + +Mrs. March joined him in deriding the superstition of people, and she +parted gayly with this over-good young couple. As soon as they were gone, +March knew that she would say: "You must change that ticket, my dear. We +will go in the Norumbia." + +"Suppose I can't get as good a room on the Norumbia?" + +"Then we must stay." + +In the morning after a night so bad that it was worse than no night at +all, she said she would go to the steamship office with him and question +them up about the Colmannia. The people there had never heard she was +called an unlucky boat; they knew of nothing disastrous in her history. +They were so frank and so full in their denials, and so kindly patient of +Mrs. March's anxieties, that he saw every word was carrying conviction of +their insincerity to her. At the end she asked what rooms were left on +the Norumbia, and the clerk whom they had fallen to looked through his +passenger list with a shaking head. He was afraid there was nothing they +would like. + +"But we would take anything," she entreated, and March smiled to think of +his innocence in supposing for a moment that she had ever dreamed of not +going. + +"We merely want the best," he put in. "One flight up, no noise or dust, +with sun in all the windows, and a place for fire on rainy days." + +They must be used to a good deal of American joking which they do not +understand, in the foreign steamship offices. The clerk turned +unsmilingly to one of his superiors and asked him some question in German +which March could not catch, perhaps because it formed no part of a +conversation with a barber, a bootmaker or a banker. A brief drama +followed, and then the clerk pointed to a room on the plan of the +Norumbia and said it had just been given up, and they could have it if +they decided to take it at once. + +They looked, and it was in the very place of their room on the Colmannia; +it was within one of being the same number. It was so providential, if it +was providential at all, that they were both humbly silent a moment; even +Mrs. March was silent. In this supreme moment she would not prompt her +husband by a word, a glance, and it was from his own free will that he +said, "We will take it." + +He thought it was his free will, but perhaps one's will is never free; +and this may have been an instance of pure determinism from all the +events before it. No event that followed affected it, though the day +after they had taken their passage on the Norumbia he heard that she had +once been in the worst sort of storm in the month of August. He felt +obliged to impart the fact to his wife, but she said that it proved +nothing for or against the ship, and confounded him more by her reason +than by all her previous unreason. Reason is what a man is never prepared +for in women; perhaps because he finds it so seldom in men. + + + + +V. + +During nearly the whole month that now passed before the date of sailing +it seemed to March that in some familiar aspects New York had never been +so interesting. He had not easily reconciled himself to the place after +his many years of Boston; but he had got used to the ugly grandeur, to +the noise and the rush, and he had divined more and more the careless +good-nature and friendly indifference of the vast, sprawling, ungainly +metropolis. There were happy moments when he felt a poetry unintentional +and unconscious in it, and he thought there was no point more favorable +for the sense of this than Stuyvesant Square, where they had a flat. +Their windows looked down into its tree-tops, and across them to the +truncated towers of St. George's, and to the plain red-brick, +white-trimmed front of the Friends' Meeting House; he came and went +between his dwelling and his office through the two places that form the +square, and after dinner his wife and he had a habit of finding seats by +one of the fountains in Livingston Place, among the fathers and mothers +of the hybrid East Side children swarming there at play. The elders read +their English or Italian or German or Yiddish journals, or gossiped, or +merely sat still and stared away the day's fatigue; while the little ones +raced in and out among them, crying and laughing, quarrelling and +kissing. Sometimes a mother darted forward and caught her child from the +brink of the basin; another taught hers to walk, holding it tightly up +behind by its short skirts; another publicly nursed her baby to sleep. + +While they still dreamed, but never thought, of going to Europe, the +Marches often said how European all this was; if these women had brought +their knitting or sewing it would have been quite European; but as soon +as they had decided to go, it all began to seem poignantly American. In +like manner, before the conditions of their exile changed, and they still +pined for the Old World, they contrived a very agreeable illusion of it +by dining now and then at an Austrian restaurant in Union Square; but +later when they began to be homesick for the American scenes they had not +yet left, they had a keener retrospective joy in the strictly New York +sunset they were bowed out into. + +The sunsets were uncommonly characteristic that May in Union Square. They +were the color of the red stripes in the American flag, and when they +were seen through the delirious architecture of the Broadway side, or +down the perspective of the cross-streets, where the elevated trains +silhouetted themselves against their pink, they imparted a feeling of +pervasive Americanism in which all impression of alien savors and +civilities was lost. One evening a fire flamed up in Hoboken, and burned +for hours against the west, in the lurid crimson tones of a conflagration +as memorably and appealingly native as the colors of the sunset. + +The weather for nearly the whole month was of a mood familiar enough in +our early summer, and it was this which gave the sunsets their vitreous +pink. A thrilling coolness followed a first blaze of heat, and in the +long respite the thoughts almost went back to winter flannels. But at +last a hot wave was telegraphed from the West, and the week before the +Norumbia sailed was an anguish of burning days and breathless nights, +which fused all regrets and reluctances in the hope of escape, and made +the exiles of two continents long for the sea, with no care for either +shore. + + + + +VI. + +Their steamer was to sail early; they were up at dawn because they had +scarcely lain down, and March crept out into the square for a last breath +of its morning air before breakfast. He was now eager to be gone; he had +broken with habit, and he wished to put all traces of the past out of +sight. But this was curiously like all other early mornings in his +consciousness, and he could not alienate himself from the wonted +environment. He stood talking on every-day terms of idle speculation with +the familiar policeman, about a stray parrot in the top of one of the +trees, where it screamed and clawed at the dead branch to which it clung. +Then he went carelessly indoors again as if he were secure of reading the +reporter's story of it in that next day's paper which he should not see. + +The sense of an inseverable continuity persisted through the breakfast, +which was like other breakfasts in the place they would be leaving in +summer shrouds just as they always left it at the end of June. The +illusion was even heightened by the fact that their son was to be in the +apartment all summer, and it would not be so much shut up as usual. The +heavy trunks had been sent to the ship by express the afternoon before, +and they had only themselves and their stateroom baggage to transport to +Hoboken; they came down to a carriage sent from a neighboring +livery-stable, and exchanged good-mornings with a driver they knew by +name. + +March had often fancied it a chief advantage of living in New York that +you could drive to the steamer and start for Europe as if you were +starting for Albany; he was in the enjoyment of this advantage now, but +somehow it was not the consolation he had expected. He knew, of course, +that if they had been coming from Boston, for instance, to sail in the +Norumbia, they would probably have gone on board the night before, and +sweltered through its heat among the strange smells and noises of the +dock and wharf, instead of breakfasting at their own table, and smoothly +bowling down the asphalt on to the ferryboat, and so to the very foot of +the gangway at the ship's side, all in the cool of the early morning. But +though he had now the cool of the early morning on these conditions, +there was by no means enough of it. + +The sun was already burning the life out of the air, with the threat of +another day of the terrible heat that had prevailed for a week past; and +that last breakfast at home had not been gay, though it had been lively, +in a fashion, through Mrs. March's efforts to convince her son that she +did not want him to come and see them off. Of, her daughter's coming all +the way from Chicago there was no question, and she reasoned that if he +did not come to say good-by on board it would be the same as if they were +not going. + +"Don't you want to go?" March asked with an obscure resentment. + +"I don't want to seem to go," she said, with the calm of those who have +logic on their side. + +As she drove away with her husband she was not so sure of her +satisfaction in the feint she had arranged, though when she saw the +ghastly partings of people on board, she was glad she had not allowed her +son to come. She kept saying this to herself, and when they climbed to +the ship from the wharf, and found themselves in the crowd that choked +the saloons and promenades and passages and stairways and landings, she +said it more than once to her husband. + +She heard weary elders pattering empty politenesses of farewell with +friends who had come to see them off, as they stood withdrawn in such +refuges as the ship's architecture afforded, or submitted to be pushed +and twirled about by the surging throng when they got in its way. She +pitied these in their affliction, which she perceived that they could not +lighten or shorten, but she had no patience with the young girls, who +broke into shrieks of nervous laughter at the coming of certain young +men, and kept laughing and beckoning till they made the young men see +them; and then stretched their hands to them and stood screaming and +shouting to them across the intervening heads and shoulders. Some girls, +of those whom no one had come to bid good-by, made themselves merry, or +at least noisy, by rushing off to the dining-room and looking at the +cards on the bouquets heaping the tables, to find whether any one had +sent them flowers. Others whom young men had brought bunches of violets +hid their noses in them, and dropped their fans and handkerchiefs and +card-cases, and thanked the young men for picking them up. Others, had +got places in the music-room, and sat there with open boxes of +long-stemmed roses in their laps, and talked up into the faces of the +men, with becoming lifts and slants of their eyes and chins. In the midst +of the turmoil children struggled against people's feet and knees, and +bewildered mothers flew at the ship's officers and battered them with +questions alien to their respective functions as they amiably stifled +about in their thick uniforms. + +Sailors, slung over the ship's side on swinging seats, were placidly +smearing it with paint at that last moment; the bulwarks were thickly set +with the heads and arms of passengers who were making signs to friends on +shore, or calling messages to them that lost themselves in louder noises +midway. Some of the women in the steerage were crying; they were probably +not going to Europe for pleasure like the first-cabin passengers, or even +for their health; on the wharf below March saw the face of one young girl +twisted with weeping, and he wished he had not seen it. He turned from +it, and looked into the eyes of his son, who was laughing at his +shoulder. He said that he had to come down with a good-by letter from his +sister, which he made an excuse for following them; but he had always +meant to see them off, he owned. The letter had just come with a special +delivery stamp, and it warned them that she had sent another good-by +letter with some flowers on board. Mrs. March scolded at them both, but +with tears in her eyes, and in the renewed stress of parting which he +thought he had put from him, March went on taking note, as with alien +senses, of the scene before him, while they all talked on together, and +repeated the nothings they had said already. + +A rank odor of beet-root sugar rose from the far-branching sheds where +some freight steamers of the line lay, and seemed to mingle chemically +with the noise which came up from the wharf next to the Norumbia. The +mass of spectators deepened and dimmed away into the shadow of the roofs, +and along their front came files of carriages and trucks and carts, and +discharged the arriving passengers and their baggage, and were lost in +the crowd, which they penetrated like slow currents, becoming clogged and +arrested from time to time, and then beginning to move again. + +The passengers incessantly mounted by the canvas-draped galleries +leading, fore and aft, into the ship. Bareheaded, blue-jacketed, +brass-buttoned stewards dodged skillfully in and out among them with +their hand-bags, holdalls, hat-boxes, and state-room trunks, and ran +before them into the different depths and heights where they hid these +burdens, and then ran back for more. Some of the passengers followed them +and made sure that their things were put in the right places; most of +them remained wedged among the earlier comers, or pushed aimlessly in and +out of the doors of the promenades. + +The baggage for the hold continually rose in huge blocks from the wharf, +with a loud clucking of the tackle, and sank into the open maw of the +ship, momently gathering herself for her long race seaward, with harsh +hissings and rattlings and gurglings. There was no apparent reason why it +should all or any of it end, but there came a moment when there began to +be warnings that were almost threats of the end. The ship's whistle +sounded, as if marking a certain interval; and Mrs. March humbly +entreated, sternly commanded, her son to go ashore, or else be carried to +Europe. They disputed whether that was the last signal or not; she was +sure it was, and she appealed to March, who was moved against his reason. +He affected to talk calmly with his son, and gave him some last charges +about 'Every Other Week'. + +Some people now interrupted their leave-taking; but the arriving +passengers only arrived more rapidly at the gang-ways; the bulks of +baggage swung more swiftly into the air. A bell rang, and there rose +women's cries, "Oh, that is the shore-bell!" and men's protests, "It is +only the first bell!" More and more began to descend the gangways, fore +and aft, and soon outnumbered those who were coming aboard. + +March tried not to be nervous about his son's lingering; he was ashamed +of his anxiety; but he said in a low voice, "Better be off, Tom." + +His mother now said she did not care if Tom were really carried to +Europe; and at last he said, Well, he guessed he must go ashore, as if +there had been no question of that before; and then she clung to him and +would not let him go; but she acquired merit with herself at last by +pushing him into the gangway with her own hands: he nodded and waved his +hat from its foot, and mixed with the crowd. + +Presently there was hardly any one coming aboard, and the sailors began +to undo the lashings of the gangways from the ship's side; files of men +on the wharf laid hold of their rails; the stewards guarding their +approach looked up for the signal to come aboard; and in vivid pantomime +forbade some belated leavetakers to ascend. These stood aside, exchanging +bows and grins with the friends whom they could not reach; they all tried +to make one another hear some last words. The moment came when the saloon +gangway was detached; then it was pulled ashore, and the section of the +bulwarks opening to it was locked, not to be unlocked on this side of the +world. An indefinable impulse communicated itself to the steamer: while +it still seemed motionless it moved. The thick spread of faces on the +wharf, which had looked at times like some sort of strange flowers in a +level field, broke into a universal tremor, and the air above them was +filled with hats and handkerchiefs, as if with the flight of birds rising +from the field. + +The Marches tried to make out their son's face; they believed that they +did; but they decided that they had not seen him, and his mother said +that she was glad; it would only have made it harder to bear, though she +was glad he had come over to say good-by it had seemed so unnatural that +he should not, when everybody else was saying good-by. + +On the wharf color was now taking the place of form; the scene ceased to +have the effect of an instantaneous photograph; it was like an +impressionistic study. As the ship swung free of the shed and got into +the stream, the shore lost reality. Up to a certain moment, all was still +New York, all was even Hoboken; then amidst the grotesque and monstrous +shows of the architecture on either shore March felt himself at sea and +on the way to Europe. + +The fact was accented by the trouble people were already making with the +deck-steward about their steamer chairs, which they all wanted put in the +best places, and March, with a certain heart-ache, was involuntarily +verifying the instant in which he ceased to be of his native shores, +while still in full sight of them, when he suddenly reverted to them, and +as it were landed on them again in an incident that held him breathless. +A man, bareheaded, and with his arms flung wildly abroad, came flying +down the promenade from the steerage. "Capitan! Capitan! There is a +woman!" he shouted in nondescript English. "She must go hout! She must go +hout!" Some vital fact imparted itself to the ship's command and seemed +to penetrate to the ship's heart; she stopped, as if with a sort of +majestic relenting. A tug panted to her side, and lifted a ladder to it; +the bareheaded man, and a woman gripping a baby in her arms, sprawled +safely down its rungs to the deck of the tug, and the steamer moved +seaward again. + +"What is it? Oh, what is it?" his wife demanded of March's share of their +common ignorance. A young fellow passing stopped, as if arrested by the +tragic note in her voice, and explained that the woman had left three +little children locked up in her tenement while she came to bid some +friends on board good-by. + +He passed on, and Mrs. March said, "What a charming face he had!" even +before she began to wreak upon that wretched mother the overwrought +sympathy which makes good women desire the punishment of people who have +escaped danger. She would not hear any excuse for her. "Her children +oughtn't to have been out of her mind for an instant." + +"Don't you want to send back a line to ours by the pilot?" March asked. + +She started from him. "Oh, was I really beginning to forget them?" + +In the saloon where people were scattered about writing pilot's letters +she made him join her in an impassioned epistle of farewell, which once +more left none of the nothings unsaid that they had many times +reiterated. She would not let him put the stamp on, for fear it would not +stick, and she had an agonizing moment of doubt whether it ought not to +be a German stamp; she was not pacified till the steward in charge of the +mail decided. + +"I shouldn't have forgiven myself," March said, "if we hadn't let Tom +know that twenty minutes after he left us we were still alive and well." + +"It's to Bella, too," she reasoned. + +He found her making their state-room look homelike with their familiar +things when he came with their daughter's steamer letter and the flowers +and fruit she had sent. She said, Very well, they would all keep, and +went on with her unpacking. He asked her if she did not think these home +things made it rather ghastly, and she said if he kept on in that way she +should certainly go back on the pilot-boat. He perceived that her nerves +were spent. He had resisted the impulse to an ill-timed joke about the +life-preservers under their berths when the sound of the breakfast-horn, +wavering first in the distance, found its way nearer and clearer down +their corridor. + + + + +VII. + +In one of the many visits to the steamship office which his wife's +anxieties obliged him to make, March had discussed the question of seats +in the dining-saloon. At first he had his ambition for the captain's +table, but they convinced him more easily than he afterwards convinced +Mrs. March that the captain's table had become a superstition of the +past, and conferred no special honor. It proved in the event that the +captain of the Norumbia had the good feeling to dine in a lower saloon +among the passengers who paid least for their rooms. But while the +Marches were still in their ignorance of this, they decided to get what +adventure they could out of letting the head steward put them where he +liked, and they came in to breakfast with a careless curiosity to see +what he had done for them. + +There seemed scarcely a vacant place in the huge saloon; through the oval +openings in the centre they looked down into the lower saloon and up into +the music-room, as thickly thronged with breakfasters. The tables were +brightened with the bouquets and the floral designs of ships, anchors, +harps, and doves sent to the lady passengers, and at one time the Marches +thought they were going to be put before a steam-yacht realized to the +last detail in blue and white violets. The ports of the saloon were open, +and showed the level sea; the ship rode with no motion except the tremor +from her screws. The sound of talking and laughing rose with the clatter +of knives and forks and the clash of crockery; the homely smell of the +coffee and steak and fish mixed with the spice of the roses and +carnations; the stewards ran hither and thither, and a young foolish joy +of travel welled up in the elderly hearts of the pair. When the head +steward turned out the swivel-chairs where they were to sit they both +made an inclination toward the people already at table, as if it had been +a company at some far-forgotten table d'hote in the later sixties. The +head steward seemed to understand as well as speak English, but the +table-stewards had only an effect of English, which they eked out with +"Bleace!" for all occasions of inquiry, apology, or reassurance, as the +equivalent of their native "Bitte!" Otherwise there was no reason to +suppose that they did not speak German, which was the language of a good +half of the passengers. The stewards looked English, however, in +conformity to what seems the ideal of every kind of foreign seafaring +people, and that went a good way toward making them intelligible. + +March, to whom his wife mainly left their obeisance, made it so tentative +that if it should meet no response he could feel that it had been nothing +more than a forward stoop, such as was natural in sitting down. He need +not really have taken this precaution; those whose eyes he caught more or +less nodded in return. + +A nice-looking boy of thirteen or fourteen, who had the place on the left +of the lady in the sofa seat under the port, bowed with almost +magisterial gravity, and made the lady on the sofa smile, as if she were +his mother and understood him. March decided that she had been some time +a widow; and he easily divined that the young couple on her right had +been so little time husband and wife that they would rather not have it +known. Next them was a young lady whom he did not at first think so +good-looking as she proved later to be, though she had at once a pretty +nose, with a slight upward slant at the point, long eyes under fallen +lashes, a straight forehead, not too high, and a mouth which perhaps the +exigencies of breakfasting did not allow all its characteristic charm. +She had what Mrs. March thought interesting hair, of a dull black, +roughly rolled away from her forehead and temples in a fashion not +particularly becoming to her, and she had the air of not looking so well +as she might if she had chosen. The elderly man on her right, it was easy +to see, was her father; they had a family likeness, though his fair hair, +now ashen with age, was so different from hers. He wore his beard cut in +the fashion of the Second Empire, with a Louis Napoleonic mustache, +imperial, and chin tuft; his neat head was cropt close; and there was +something Gallic in its effect and something remotely military: he had +blue eyes, really less severe than he meant, though be frowned a good +deal, and managed them with glances of a staccato quickness, as if +challenging a potential disagreement with his opinions. + +The gentleman on his right, who sat at the head of the table, was of the +humorous, subironical American expression, and a smile at the corner of +his kindly mouth, under an iron-gray full beard cut short, at once +questioned and tolerated the new-comers as he glanced at them. He +responded to March's bow almost as decidedly as the nice boy, whose +mother he confronted at the other end of the table, and with his comely +bulk formed an interesting contrast to her vivid slightness. She was +brilliantly dark, behind the gleam of the gold-rimmed glasses perched on +her pretty nose. + +If the talk had been general before the Marches came, it did not at once +renew itself in that form. Nothing was said while they were having their +first struggle with the table-stewards, who repeated the order as if to +show how fully they had misunderstood it. The gentleman at the head of +the table intervened at last, and then, "I'm obliged to you," March said, +"for your German. I left mine in a phrase-book in my other coat pocket." + +"Oh, I wasn't speaking German," said the other. "It was merely their kind +of English." + +The company were in the excitement of a novel situation which disposes +people to acquaintance, and this exchange of small pleasantries made +every one laugh, except the father and daughter; but they had the effect +of being tacitly amused. + +The mother of the nice boy said to Mrs. March, "You may not get what you +ordered, but it will be good." + +"Even if you don't know what it is!" said the young bride, and then +blushed, as if she had been too bold. + +Mrs. March liked the blush and the young bride for it, and she asked, +"Have you ever been on one of these German boats before? They seem very +comfortable." + +"Oh, dear, no! we've never been on any boat before." She made a little +petted mouth of deprecation, and added, simple-heartedly, "My husband was +going out on business, and he thought he might as well take me along." + +The husband seemed to feel himself brought in by this, and said he did +not see why they should not make it a pleasure-trip, too. They put +themselves in a position to be patronized by their deference, and in the +pauses of his talk with the gentleman at the head of the table, March +heard his wife abusing their inexperience to be unsparingly instructive +about European travel. He wondered whether she would be afraid to own +that it was nearly thirty years since she had crossed the ocean; though +that might seem recent to people who had never crossed at all. + +They listened with respect as she boasted in what an anguish of wisdom +she had decided between the Colmannia and the Norumbia. The wife said she +did not know there was such a difference in steamers, but when Mrs. March +perfervidly assured her that there was all the difference in the world, +she submitted and said she supposed she ought to be thankful that they, +had hit upon the right one. They had telegraphed for berths and taken +what was given them; their room seemed to be very nice. + +"Oh," said Mrs. March, and her husband knew that she was saying it to +reconcile them to the inevitable, "all the rooms on the Norumbia are +nice. The only difference is that if they are on the south side you have +the sun." + +"I'm not sure which is the south side," said the bride. "We seem to have +been going west ever since we started, and I feel as if we should reach +home in the morning if we had a good night. Is the ocean always so smooth +as this?" + +"Oh, dear, no!" said Mrs. March. "It's never so smooth as this," and she +began to be outrageously authoritative about the ocean weather. She ended +by declaring that the June passages were always good, and that if the +ship kept a southerly course they would have no fogs and no icebergs. She +looked round, and caught her husband's eye. "What is it? Have I been +bragging? Well, you understand," she added to the bride, "I've only been +over once, a great while ago, and I don't really know anything about it," +and they laughed together. "But I talked so much with people after we +decided to go, that I feel as if I had been a hundred times." + +"I know," said the other lady, with caressing intelligence. "That is just +the way with--" She stopped, and looked at the young man whom the head +steward was bringing up to take the vacant place next to March. He came +forward, stuffing his cap into the pocket of his blue serge sack, and +smiled down on the company with such happiness in his gay eyes that March +wondered what chance at this late day could have given any human creature +his content so absolute, and what calamity could be lurking round the +corner to take it out of him. The new-comer looked at March as if he knew +him, and March saw at a second glance that he was the young fellow who +had told him about the mother put off after the start. He asked him +whether there was any change in the weather yet outside, and he answered +eagerly, as if the chance to put his happiness into the mere sound of +words were a favor done him, that their ship had just spoken one of the +big Hanseatic mailboats, and she had signalled back that she had met ice; +so that they would probably keep a southerly course, and not have it +cooler till they were off the Banks. + +The mother of the boy said, "I thought we must be off the Banks when I +came out of my room, but it was only the electric fan at the foot of the +stairs." + +"That was what I thought," said Mrs. March. "I almost sent my husband +back for my shawl!" Both the ladies laughed and liked each other for +their common experience. + +The gentleman at the head of the table said, "They ought to have fans +going there by that pillar, or else close the ports. They only let in +heat." + +They easily conformed to the American convention of jocosity in their +talk; it perhaps no more represents the individual mood than the +convention of dulness among other people; but it seemed to make the young +man feel at home. + +"Why, do you think it's uncomfortably warm?" he asked, from what March +perceived to be a meteorology of his own. He laughed and added, "It is +pretty summerlike," as if he had not thought of it before. He talked of +the big mail-boat, and said he would like to cross on such a boat as +that, and then he glanced at the possible advantage of having your own +steam-yacht like the one which he said they had just passed, so near that +you could see what a good time the people were having on board. He began +to speak to the Marches; his talk spread to the young couple across the +table; it visited the mother on the sofa in a remark which she might +ignore without apparent rejection, and without really avoiding the boy, +it glanced off toward the father and daughter, from whom it fell, to rest +with the gentleman at the head of the table. + +It was not that the father and daughter had slighted his overture, if it +was so much as that, but that they were tacitly preoccupied, or were of +some philosophy concerning their fellow-breakfasters which did not suffer +them, for the present, at least, to share in the common friendliness. +This is an attitude sometimes produced in people by a sense of just, or +even unjust, superiority; sometimes by serious trouble; sometimes by +transient annoyance. The cause was not so deep-seated but Mrs. March, +before she rose from her place, believed that she had detected a slant of +the young lady's eyes, from under her lashes, toward the young man; and +she leaped to a conclusion concerning them in a matter where all logical +steps are impertinent. She did not announce her arrival at this point +till the young man had overtaken her before she got out of the saloon, +and presented the handkerchief she had dropped under the table. + +He went away with her thanks, and then she said to her husband, "Well, +he's perfectly charming, and I don't wonder she's taken with him; that +kind of cold girl would be, though I'm not sure that she is cold. She's +interesting, and you could see that he thought so, the more he looked at +her; I could see him looking at her from the very first instant; he +couldn't keep his eyes off her; she piqued his curiosity, and made him +wonder about her." + +"Now, look here, Isabel! This won't do. I can stand a good deal, but I +sat between you and that young fellow, and you couldn't tell whether he +was looking at that girl or not." + +"I could! I could tell by the expression of her face." + +"Oh, well! If it's gone as far as that with you, I give it up. When are +you going to have them married?" + +"Nonsense! I want you to find out who all those people are. How are you +going to do it?" + +"Perhaps the passenger list will say," he suggested. + + + + +VIII. + +The list did not say of itself, but with the help of the head steward's +diagram it said that the gentleman at the head of the table was Mr. R. M. +Kenby; the father and the daughter were Mr. E. B. Triscoe and Miss +Triscoe; the bridal pair were Mr. and Mrs. Leffers; the mother and her +son were Mrs. Adding and Mr. Roswell Adding; the young man who came in +last was Mr. L. J. Burnamy. March carried the list, with these names +carefully checked and rearranged on a neat plan of the table, to his wife +in her steamer chair, and left her to make out the history and the +character of the people from it. In this sort of conjecture long +experience had taught him his futility, and he strolled up and down and +looked at the life about him with no wish to penetrate it deeply. + +Long Island was now a low yellow line on the left. Some fishing-boats +flickered off the shore; they met a few sail, and left more behind; but +already, and so near one of the greatest ports of the world, the spacious +solitude of the ocean was beginning. There was no swell; the sea lay +quite flat, with a fine mesh of wrinkles on its surface, and the sun +flamed down upon it from a sky without a cloud. With the light fair wind, +there was no resistance in the sultry air, the thin, dun smoke from the +smoke-stack fell about the decks like a stifling veil. + +The promenades, were as uncomfortably crowded as the sidewalk of +Fourteenth Street on a summer's day, and showed much the social average +of a New York shopping thoroughfare. Distinction is something that does +not always reveal itself at first sight on land, and at sea it is still +more retrusive. A certain democracy of looks and clothes was the most +notable thing to March in the apathetic groups and detached figures. His +criticism disabled the saloon passengers of even so much personal appeal +as he imagined in some of the second-cabin passengers whom he saw across +their barrier; they had at least the pathos of their exclusion, and he +could wonder if they felt it or envied him. At Hoboken he had seen +certain people coming on board who looked like swells; but they had now +either retired from the crowd, or they had already conformed to the +prevailing type. It was very well as a type; he was of it himself; but he +wished that beauty as well as distinction had not been so lost in it. + +In fact, he no longer saw so much beauty anywhere as he once did. It +might be that he saw life more truly than when he was young, and that his +glasses were better than his eyes had been; but there were analogies that +forbade his thinking so, and he sometimes had his misgivings that the +trouble was with his glasses. He made what he could of a pretty girl who +had the air of not meaning to lose a moment from flirtation, and was +luring her fellow-passengers from under her sailor hat. She had already +attached one of them; and she was hooking out for more. She kept moving +herself from the waist up, as if she worked there on a pivot, showing now +this side and now that side of her face, and visiting the admirer she had +secured with a smile as from the lamp of a revolving light as she turned. + +While he was dwelling upon this folly, with a sense of impersonal +pleasure in it as complete through his years as if he were already a +disembodied spirit, the pulse of the engines suddenly ceased, and he +joined the general rush to the rail, with a fantastic expectation of +seeing another distracted mother put off; but it was only the pilot +leaving the ship. He was climbing down the ladder which hung over the +boat, rising and sinking on the sea below, while the two men in her held +her from the ship's side with their oars; in the offing lay the white +steam-yacht which now replaces the picturesque pilot-sloop of other +times. The Norumbia's screws turned again under half a head of steam; the +pilot dropped from the last rung of the ladder into the boat, and caught +the bundle of letters tossed after him. Then his men let go the line that +was towing their craft, and the incident of the steamer's departure was +finally closed. It had been dramatically heightened perhaps by her final +impatience to be off at some added risks to the pilot and his men, but +not painfully so, and March smiled to think how men whose lives are all +of dangerous chances seem always to take as many of them as they can. + +He heard a girl's fresh voice saying at his shoulder, "Well, now we are +off; and I suppose you're glad, papa!" + +"I'm glad we're not taking the pilot on, at least," answered the elderly +man whom the girl had spoken to; and March turned to see the father and +daughter whose reticence at the breakfast table had interested him. He +wondered that he had left her out of the account in estimating the beauty +of the ship's passengers: he saw now that she was not only extremely +pretty, but as she moved away she was very graceful; she even had +distinction. He had fancied a tone of tolerance, and at the same time of +reproach in her voice, when she spoke, and a tone of defiance and not +very successful denial in her father's; and he went back with these +impressions to his wife, whom he thought he ought to tell why the ship +had stopped. + +She had not noticed the ship's stopping, in her study of the passenger +list, and she did not care for the pilot's leaving; but she seemed to +think his having overheard those words of the father and daughter an +event of prime importance. With a woman's willingness to adapt the means +to the end she suggested that he should follow them up and try to +overhear something more; she only partially realized the infamy of her +suggestion when he laughed in scornful refusal. + +"Of course I don't want you to eavesdrop, but I do want you to find out +about them. And about Mr. Burnamy, too. I can wait, about the others, or +manage for myself, but these are driving me to distraction. Now, will +you?" + +He said he would do anything he could with honor, and at one of the +earliest turns he made on the other side of the ship he was smilingly +halted by Mr. Burnamy, who asked to be excused, and then asked if he were +not Mr. March of 'Every Other Week'; he had seen the name on the +passenger list, and felt sure it must be the editor's. He seemed so +trustfully to expect March to remember his own name as that of a writer +from whom he had accepted a short poem, yet unprinted, that the editor +feigned to do so until he really did dimly recall it. He even recalled +the short poem, and some civil words he said about it caused Burnamy to +overrun in confidences that at once touched and amused him. + + + + +IX. + +Burnamy, it seemed, had taken passage on the Norumbia because he found, +when he arrived in New York the day before, that she was the first boat +out. His train was so much behind time that when he reached the office of +the Hanseatic League it was nominally shut, but he pushed in by +sufferance of the janitor, and found a berth, which had just been given +up, in one of the saloon-deck rooms. It was that or nothing; and he felt +rich enough to pay for it himself if the Bird of Prey, who had cabled him +to come out to Carlsbad as his secretary, would not stand the difference +between the price and that of the lower-deck six-in-a-room berth which he +would have taken if he had been allowed a choice. + +With the three hundred dollars he had got for his book, less the price of +his passage, changed into German bank-notes and gold pieces, and safely +buttoned in the breast pocket of his waistcoat, he felt as safe from +pillage as from poverty when he came out from buying his ticket; he +covertly pressed his arm against his breast from time to time, for the +joy of feeling his money there and not from any fear of finding it gone. +He wanted to sing, he wanted to dance; he could not believe it was he, as +he rode up the lonely length of Broadway in the cable-car, between the +wild, irregular walls of the canyon which the cable-cars have all to +themselves at the end of a summer afternoon. + +He went and dined, and he thought he dined well, at a Spanish-American +restaurant, for fifty cents, with a half-bottle of California claret +included. When he came back to Broadway he was aware that it was +stiflingly hot in the pinkish twilight, but he took a cable-car again in +lack of other pastime, and the motion served the purpose of a breeze, +which he made the most of by keeping his hat off. It did not really +matter to him whether it was hot or cool; he was imparadised in weather +which had nothing to do with the temperature. Partly because he was born +to such weather, in the gayety of soul which amused some people with him, +and partly because the world was behaving as he had always expected, he +was opulently content with the present moment. But he thought very +tolerantly of the future, and he confirmed himself in the decision he had +already made, to stick to Chicago when he came back to America. New York +was very well, and he had no sentiment about Chicago; but he had got a +foothold there; he had done better with an Eastern publisher, he +believed, by hailing from the West, and he did not believe it would hurt +him with the Eastern public to keep on hailing from the West. + +He was glad of a chance to see Europe, but he did not mean to come home +so dazzled as to see nothing else against the American sky. He fancied, +for he really knew nothing, that it was the light of Europe, not its +glare that he wanted, and he wanted it chiefly on his material, so as to +see it more and more objectively. It was his power of detachment from +this that had enabled him to do his sketches in the paper with such charm +as to lure a cash proposition from a publisher when he put them together +for a book, but he believed that his business faculty had much to do with +his success; and he was as proud of that as of the book itself. Perhaps +he was not so very proud of the book; he was at least not vain of it; he +could, detach himself from his art as well as his material. + +Like all literary temperaments he was of a certain hardness, in spite of +the susceptibilities that could be used to give coloring to his work. He +knew this well enough, but he believed that there were depths of +unprofessional tenderness in his nature. He was good to his mother, and +he sent her money, and wrote to her in the little Indiana town where he +had left her when he came to Chicago. After he got that invitation from +the Bird of Prey, he explored his heart for some affection that he had +not felt for him before, and he found a wish that his employer should not +know it was he who had invented that nickname for him. He promptly avowed +this in the newspaper office which formed one of the eyries of the Bird +of Prey, and made the fellows promise not to give him away. He failed to +move their imagination when he brought up as a reason for softening +toward him that he was from Burnamy's own part of Indiana, and was a +benefactor of Tippecanoe University, from which Burnamy was graduated. +But they, relished the cynicism of his attempt; and they were glad of his +good luck, which he was getting square and not rhomboid, as most people +seem to get their luck. They liked him, and some of them liked him for +his clean young life as well as for his cleverness. His life was known to +be as clean as a girl's, and he looked like a girl with his sweet eyes, +though he had rather more chin than most girls. + +The conductor came to reverse his seat, and Burnamy told him he guessed +he would ride back with him as far as the cars to the Hoboken Ferry, if +the conductor would put him off at the right place. It was nearly nine +o'clock, and he thought he might as well be going over to the ship, where +he had decided to pass the night. After he found her, and went on board, +he was glad he had not gone sooner. A queasy odor of drainage stole up +from the waters of the dock, and mixed with the rank, gross sweetness of +the bags of beet-root sugar from the freight-steamers; there was a coming +and going of carts and trucks on the wharf, and on the ship a rattling of +chains and a clucking of pulleys, with sudden outbreaks and then sudden +silences of trampling sea-boots. Burnamy looked into the dining-saloon +and the music-room, with the notion of trying for some naps there; then +he went to his state-room. His room-mate, whoever he was to be, had not +come; and he kicked off his shoes and threw off his coat and tumbled into +his berth. + +He meant to rest awhile, and then get up and spend the night in receiving +impressions. He could not think of any one who had done the facts of the +eve of sailing on an Atlantic liner. He thought he would use the material +first in a letter to the paper and afterwards in a poem; but he found +himself unable to grasp the notion of its essential relation to the +choice between chicken croquettes and sweetbreads as entrees of the +restaurant dinner where he had been offered neither; he knew that he had +begun to dream, and that he must get up. He was just going to get up, +when he woke to a sense of freshness in the air, penetrating from the new +day outside. He looked at his watch and found it was quarter past six; he +glanced round the state-room and saw that he had passed the night alone +in it. Then he splashed himself hastily at the basin next his berth, and +jumped into his clothes, and went on deck, anxious to lose no feature or +emotion of the ship's departure. + +When she was fairly off he returned to his room to change the thick coat +he had put on at the instigation of the early morning air. His room-mate +was still absent, but he was now represented by his state-room baggage, +and Burnamy tried to infer him from it. He perceived a social quality in +his dress-coat case, capacious gladstone, hat-box, rug, umbrella, and +sole-leather steamer trunk which he could not attribute to his own +equipment. The things were not so new as his; they had an effect of +polite experience, with a foreign registry and customs label on them here +and there. They had been chosen with both taste and knowledge, and +Burnamy would have said that they were certainly English things, if it +had not been for the initials U. S. A. which followed the name of E. B. +Triscoe on the end of the steamer trunk showing itself under the foot of +the lower berth. + +The lower berth had fallen to Burnamy through the default of the +passenger whose ticket he had got at the last hour; the clerk in the +steamer office had been careful to impress him with this advantage, and +he now imagined a trespass on his property. But he reassured himself by a +glance at his ticket, and went out to watch the ship's passage down the +stream and through the Narrows. After breakfast he came to his room +again, to see what could be done from his valise to make him look better +in the eyes of a girl whom he had seen across the table; of course he +professed a much more general purpose. He blamed himself for not having +got at least a pair of the white tennis-shoes which so many of the +passengers were wearing; his russet shoes had turned shabby on his feet; +but there was a pair of enamelled leather boots in his bag which he +thought might do. + +His room was in the group of cabins on the upper deck; he had already +missed his way to it once by mistaking the corridor which it opened into; +and he was not sure that he was not blundering again when he peered down +the narrow passage where he supposed it was. A lady was standing at an +open state-room door, resting her hands against the jambs and leaning +forward with her head within and talking to some one there. Before he +could draw back and try another corridor he heard her say: "Perhaps he's +some young man, and wouldn't care." + +Burnamy could not make out the answer that came from within. The lady +spoke again in a tone of reluctant assent, "No, I don't suppose you +could; but if he understood, perhaps he would offer." + +She drew her head out of the room, stepping back a pace, and lingering a +moment at the threshold. She looked round over her shoulder and +discovered Burnamy, where he stood hesitating at the head of the passage. +She ebbed before him, and then flowed round him in her instant escape; +with some murmured incoherencies about speaking to her father, she +vanished in a corridor on the other side of the ship, while he stood +staring into the doorway of his room. + +He had seen that she was the young lady for whom he had come to put on +his enamelled shoes, and he saw that the person within was the elderly +gentleman who had sat next her at breakfast. He begged his pardon, as he +entered, and said he hoped he should not disturb him. "I'm afraid I left +my things all over the place, when I got up this morning." + +The other entreated him not to mention it and went on taking from his +hand-bag a variety of toilet appliances which the sight of made Burnamy +vow to keep his own simple combs and brushes shut in his valise all the +way over. "You slept on board, then," he suggested, arresting himself +with a pair of low shoes in his hand; he decided to put them in a certain +pocket of his steamer bag. + +"Oh, yes," Burnamy laughed, nervously: "I came near oversleeping, and +getting off to sea without knowing it; and I rushed out to save myself, +and so--" + +He began to gather up his belongings while he followed the movements of +Mr. Triscoe with a wistful eye. He would have liked to offer his lower +berth to this senior of his, when he saw him arranging to take possession +of the upper; but he did not quite know how to manage it. He noticed that +as the other moved about he limped slightly, unless it were rather a +weary easing of his person from one limb to the other. He stooped to pull +his trunk out from under the berth, and Burnamy sprang to help him. + +"Let me get that out for you!" He caught it up and put it on the sofa +under the port. "Is that where you want it?" + +"Why, yes," the other assented. "You're very good," and as he took out +his key to unlock the trunk he relented a little farther to the +intimacies of the situation. "Have you arranged with the bath-steward +yet? It's such a full boat." + +"No, I haven't," said Burnamy, as if he had tried and failed; till then +he had not known that there was a bath-steward. "Shall I get him for +you?" + +"No; no. Our bedroom-steward will send him, I dare say, thank you." + +Mr. Triscoe had got his trunk open, and Burnamy had no longer an excuse +for lingering. In his defeat concerning the bath-steward, as he felt it +to be, he had not the courage, now, to offer the lower berth. He went +away, forgetting to change his shoes; but he came back, and as soon as he +got the enamelled shoes on, and shut the shabby russet pair in his bag, +he said, abruptly: "Mr. Triscoe, I wish you'd take the lower berth. I got +it at the eleventh hour by some fellow's giving it up, and it isn't as if +I'd bargained for it a month ago." + +The elder man gave him one of his staccato glances in which Burnamy +fancied suspicion and even resentment. But he said, after the moment of +reflection which he gave himself, "Why, thank you, if you don't mind, +really." + +"Not at all!" cried the young man. "I should like the upper berth better. +We'll, have the steward change the sheets." + +"Oh, I'll see that he does that," said Mr. Triscoe. "I couldn't allow you +to take any trouble about it." He now looked as if he wished Burnamy +would go, and leave him to his domestic arrangements. + + + + +X. + +In telling about himself Burnamy touched only upon the points which he +believed would take his listener's intelligent fancy, and he stopped so +long before he had tired him that March said he would like to introduce +him to his wife. He saw in the agreeable young fellow an image of his own +youth, with some differences which, he was willing to own, were to the +young fellow's advantage. But they were both from the middle West; in +their native accent and their local tradition they were the same; they +were the same in their aspirations; they were of one blood in their +literary impulse to externate their thoughts and emotions. + +Burnamy answered, with a glance at his enamelled shoes, that he would be +delighted, and when her husband brought him up to her, Mrs. March said +she was always glad to meet the contributors to the magazine, and asked +him whether he knew Mr. Kendricks, who was her favorite. Without giving +him time to reply to a question that seemed to depress him, she said that +she had a son who must be nearly his own age, and whom his father had +left in charge of 'Every Other Week' for the few months they were to be +gone; that they had a daughter married and living in Chicago. She made +him sit down by her in March's chair, and before he left them March heard +him magnanimously asking whether Mr. Kendricks was going to do something +more for the magazine soon. He sauntered away and did not know how +quickly Burnamy left this question to say, with the laugh and blush which +became him in her eyes: + +"Mrs. March, there is something I should like to tell you about, if you +will let me." + +"Why, certainly, Mr. Burnamy," she began, but she saw that he did not +wish her to continue. + +"Because," he went on, "it's a little matter that I shouldn't like to go +wrong in." + +He told her of his having overheard what Miss Triscoe had said to her +father, and his belief that she was talking about the lower berth. He +said he would have wished to offer it, of course, but now he was afraid +they might think he had overheard them and felt obliged to do it. + +"I see," said Mrs. March, and she added, thoughtfully, "She looks like +rather a proud girl." + +"Yes," the young fellow sighed. + +"She is very charming," she continued, thoughtfully, but not so +judicially. + +"Well," Burnamy owned, "that is certainly one of the complications," and +they laughed together. + +She stopped herself after saying, "I see what you mean," and suggested, +"I think I should be guided by circumstances. It needn't be done at once, +I suppose." + +"Well," Burnamy began, and then he broke out, with a laugh of +embarrassment, "I've done it already." + +"Oh! Then it wasn't my advice, exactly, that you wanted." + +"No!" + +"And how did he take it?" + +"He said he should be glad to make the exchange if I really didn't mind." +Burnamy had risen restlessly, and she did not ask him to stay. She merely +said: + +"Oh, well, I'm glad it turned out so nicely." + +"I'm so glad you think it was the thing to do." He managed to laugh +again, but he could not hide from her that he was not feeling altogether +satisfied. "Would you like me to send Mr. March, if I see him?" he asked, +as if he did not know on what other terms to get away. + +"Do, please!" she entreated, and it seemed to her that he had hardly left +her when her husband came up. "Why, where in the world did he find you so +soon?" + +"Did you send him for me? I was just hanging round for him to go." March +sank into the chair at her side. "Well, is he going to marry her?" + +"Oh, you may laugh! But there is something very exciting!" She told him +what had happened, and of her belief that Burnamy's handsome behavior had +somehow not been met in kind. + +March gave himself the pleasure of an immense laugh. "It seems to me that +this Mr. Burnamy of yours wanted a little more gratitude than he was +entitled to. Why shouldn't he have offered him the lower berth? And why +shouldn't the old gentleman have taken it just as he did? Did you want +him to make a counteroffer of his daughter's hand? If he does, I hope Mr. +Burnamy won't come for your advice till after he's accepted her." + +"He wasn't very candid. I hoped you would speak about that. Don't you +think it was rather natural, though?" + +"For him, very likely. But I think you would call it sinuous in some one +you hadn't taken a fancy to." + +"No, no. I wish to be just. I don't see how he could have come straight +at it. And he did own up at last." She asked him what Burnamy had done +for the magazine, and he could remember nothing but that one small poem, +yet unprinted; he was rather vague about its value, but said it had +temperament. + +"He has temperament, too," she commented, and she had made him tell her +everything he knew, or could be forced to imagine about Burnamy, before +she let the talk turn to other things. + +The life of the promenade had already settled into seafaring form; the +steamer chairs were full, and people were reading or dozing in them with +an effect of long habit. Those who would be walking up and down had begun +their walks; some had begun going in and out of the smoking-room; ladies +who were easily affected by the motion were lying down in the music-room. +Groups of both sexes were standing at intervals along the rail, and the +promenaders were obliged to double on a briefer course or work slowly +round them. Shuffleboard parties at one point and ring-toss parties at +another were forming among the young people. It was as lively and it was +as dull as it would be two thousand miles at sea. It was not the least +cooler, yet; but if you sat still you did not suffer. + +In the prompt monotony the time was already passing swiftly. The +deck-steward seemed hardly to have been round with tea and bouillon, and +he had not yet gathered up all the empty cups, when the horn for lunch +sounded. It was the youngest of the table-stewards who gave the summons +to meals; and whenever the pretty boy appeared with his bugle, funny +passengers gathered round him to make him laugh, and stop him from +winding it. His part of the joke was to fulfill his duty with gravity, +and only to give way to a smile of triumph as he walked off. + + + + +XI. + +At lunch, in the faded excitement of their first meeting, the people at +the Marches' table did not renew the premature intimacy of their +breakfast talk. Mrs. March went to lie down in her berth afterwards, and +March went on deck without her. He began to walk to and from the barrier +between the first and second cabin promenades; lingering near it, and +musing pensively, for some of the people beyond it looked as intelligent +and as socially acceptable, even to their clothes, as their pecuniary +betters of the saloon. + +There were two women, a mother and daughter, whom he fancied to be +teachers, by their looks, going out for a little rest, or perhaps for a +little further study to fit them more perfectly for their work. They +gazed wistfully across at him whenever he came up to the barrier; and he +feigned a conversation with them and tried to convince them that the +stamp of inferiority which their poverty put upon them was just, or if +not just, then inevitable. He argued with them that the sort of barrier +which here prevented their being friends with him, if they wished it, ran +invisibly through society everywhere but he felt ashamed before their +kind, patient, intelligent faces, and found himself wishing to excuse the +fact he was defending. Was it any worse, he asked them, than their not +being invited to the entertainments of people in upper Fifth Avenue? He +made them own that if they were let across that barrier the whole second +cabin would have a logical right to follow; and they were silenced. But +they continued to gape at him with their sincere, gentle eyes whenever he +returned to the barrier in his walk, till he could bear it no longer, and +strolled off toward the steerage. + +There was more reason why the passengers there should be penned into a +little space of their own in the sort of pit made by the narrowing deck +at the bow. They seemed to be all foreigners, and if any had made their +fortunes in our country they were hiding their prosperity in the return +to their own. They could hardly have come to us more shabby and squalid +than they were going away; but he thought their average less apathetic +than that of the saloon passengers, as he leaned over the rail and looked +down at them. Some one had brought out an electric battery, and the +lumpish boys and slattern girls were shouting and laughing as they +writhed with the current. A young mother seated flat on the deck, with +her bare feet stuck out, inattentively nursed her babe, while she laughed +and shouted with the rest; a man with his head tied in a shawl walked +about the pen and smiled grotesquely with the well side of his +toothache-swollen face. The owner of the battery carried it away, and a +group of little children, with blue eyes and yellow hair, gathered in the +space he had left, and looked up at a passenger near March who was eating +some plums and cherries which he had brought from the luncheon table. He +began to throw the fruit down to them, and the children scrambled for it. + +An elderly man, with a thin, grave, aquiline face, said, "I shouldn't +want a child of mine down there." + +"No," March responded, "it isn't quite what one would choose for one's +own. It's astonishing, though, how we reconcile ourselves to it in the +case of others." + +"I suppose it's something we'll have to get used to on the other side," +suggested the stranger. + +"Well," answered March, "you have some opportunities to get used to it on +this side, if you happen to live in New York," and he went on to speak of +the raggedness which often penetrated the frontier of comfort where he +lived in Stuyvesant Square, and which seemed as glad of alms in food or +money as this poverty of the steerage. + +The other listened restively like a man whose ideals are disturbed. "I +don't believe I should like to live in New York, much," he said, and +March fancied that he wished to be asked where he did live. It appeared +that he lived in Ohio, and he named his town; he did not brag of it, but +he said it suited him. He added that he had never expected to go to +Europe, but that he had begun to run down lately, and his doctor thought +he had better go out and try Carlsbad. + +March said, to invite his further confidence, that this was exactly his +own case. The Ohio man met the overture from a common invalidism as if it +detracted from his own distinction; and he turned to speak of the +difficulty, he had in arranging his affairs for leaving home. His heart +opened a little with the word, and he said how comfortable he and his +wife were in their house, and how much they both hated to shut it up. +When March offered him his card, he said he had none of his own with him, +but that his name was Eltwin. He betrayed a simple wish to have March +realize the local importance he had left behind him; and it was not hard +to comply; March saw a Grand Army button in the lapel of his coat, and he +knew that he was in the presence of a veteran. + +He tried to guess his rank; in telling his wife about him, when he went +down to find her just before dinner, but he ended with a certain sense of +affliction. "There are too many elderly invalids on this ship. I knock +against people of my own age everywhere. Why aren't your youthful lovers +more in evidence, my dear? I don't believe they are lovers, and I begin +to doubt if they're young even." + +"It wasn't very satisfactory at lunch, certainly," she owned. "But I know +it will be different at dinner." She was putting herself together after a +nap that had made up for the lost sleep of the night before. "I want you +to look very nice, dear. Shall you dress for dinner?" she asked her +husband's image in the state-room glass which she was preoccupying. + +"I shall dress in my pea-jacket and sea-boots," it answered. + +"I have heard that they always dress for dinner on the big Cunard and +White Star boats, when it's good weather," she went on, placidly. "I +shouldn't want those people to think you were not up in the convenances." + +They both knew that she meant the reticent father and daughter, and March +flung out, "I shouldn't want them to think you weren't. There's such a +thing as overdoing." + +She attacked him at another point. "What has annoyed you? What else have +you been doing?" + +"Nothing. I've been reading most of the afternoon." + +"The Maiden Knight?" + +This was the book which nearly everybody had brought on board. It was +just out, and had caught an instant favor, which swelled later to a tidal +wave. It depicted a heroic girl in every trying circumstance of mediaeval +life, and gratified the perennial passion of both sexes for historical +romance, while it flattered woman's instinct of superiority by the +celebration of her unintermitted triumphs, ending in a preposterous and +wholly superfluous self-sacrifice. + +March laughed for pleasure in her guess, and she pursued, "I suppose you +didn't waste time looking if anybody had brought the last copy of 'Every +Other Week'?" + +"Yes, I did; and I found the one you had left in your steamer chair--for +advertising purposes, probably." + +"Mr. Burnamy has another," she said. "I saw it sticking out of his pocket +this morning." + +"Oh, yes. He told me he had got it on the train from Chicago to see if it +had his poem in it. He's an ingenuous soul--in some ways." + +"Well, that is the very reason why you ought to find out whether the men +are going to dress, and let him know. He would never think of it +himself." + +"Neither would I," said her husband. + +"Very well, if you wish to spoil his chance at the outset," she sighed. + +She did not quite know whether to be glad or not that the men were all in +sacks and cutaways at dinner; it saved her, from shame for her husband +and Mr. Burnamy; but it put her in the wrong. Every one talked; even the +father and daughter talked with each other, and at one moment Mrs. March +could not be quite sure that the daughter had not looked at her when she +spoke. She could not be mistaken in the remark which the father addressed +to Burnamy, though it led to nothing. + + + + +XII. + +The dinner was uncommonly good, as the first dinner out is apt to be; and +it went gayly on from soup to fruit, which was of the American abundance +and variety, and as yet not of the veteran freshness imparted by the +ice-closet. Everybody was eating it, when by a common consciousness they +were aware of alien witnesses. They looked up as by a single impulse, and +saw at the port the gaunt face of a steerage passenger staring down upon +their luxury; he held on his arm a child that shared his regard with yet +hungrier eyes. A boy's nose showed itself as if tiptoed to the height of +the man's elbow; a young girl peered over his other arm. + +The passengers glanced at one another; the two table-stewards, with their +napkins in their hands, smiled vaguely, and made some indefinite +movements. + +The bachelor at the head of the table broke the spell. "I'm glad it +didn't begin with the Little Neck clams!" + +"Probably they only let those people come for the dessert," March +suggested. + +The widow now followed the direction of the other eyes; and looked up +over her shoulder; she gave a little cry, and shrank down. The young +bride made her petted mouth, in appeal to the company; her husband looked +severe, as if he were going to do something, but refrained, not to make a +scene. The reticent father threw one of his staccato glances at the port, +and Mrs. March was sure that she saw the daughter steal a look at +Burnamy. + +The young fellow laughed. "I don't suppose there's anything to be done +about it, unless we pass out a plate." + +Mr. Kenby shook his head. "It wouldn't do. We might send for the captain. +Or the chief steward." + +The faces at the port vanished. At other ports profiles passed and +repassed, as if the steerage passengers had their promenade under them, +but they paused no more. + +The Marches went up to their steamer chairs, and from her exasperated +nerves Mrs. March denounced the arrangement of the ship which had made +such a cruel thing possible. + +"Oh," he mocked, "they had probably had a good substantial meal of their +own, and the scene of our banquet was of the quality of a picture, a +purely aesthetic treat. But supposing it wasn't, we're doing something +like it every day and every moment of our lives. The Norumbia is a piece +of the whole world's civilization set afloat, and passing from shore to +shore with unchanged classes, and conditions. A ship's merely a small +stage, where we're brought to close quarters with the daily drama of +humanity." + +"Well, then," she protested, "I don't like being brought to close +quarters with the daily drama of humanity, as you call it. And I don't +believe that the large English ships are built so that the steerage +passengers can stare in at the saloon windows while one is eating; and +I'm sorry we came on the Norumbia." + +"Ah, you think the Norumbia doesn't hide anything," he began, and he was +going to speak of the men in the furnace pits of the steamer, how they +fed the fires in a welding heat, and as if they had perished in it crept +out on the forecastle like blanched phantasms of toil; but she interposed +in time. + +"If there's anything worse, for pity's sake don't tell me," she +entreated, and he forebore. + +He sat thinking how once the world had not seemed to have even death in +it, and then how as he had grown older death had come into it more and +more, and suffering was lurking everywhere, and could hardly be kept out +of sight. He wondered if that young Burnamy now saw the world as he used +to see it, a place for making verse and making love, and full of beauty +of all kinds waiting to be fitted with phrases. He had lived a happy +life; Burnamy would be lucky if he should live one half as happy; and yet +if he could show him his whole happy life, just as it had truly been, +must not the young man shrink from such a picture of his future? + +"Say something," said his wife. "What are you thinking about?" + +"Oh, Burnamy," he answered, honestly enough. + +"I was thinking about the children," she said. "I am glad Bella didn't +try to come from Chicago to see us off; it would have been too silly; she +is getting to be very sensible. I hope Tom won't take the covers off the +furniture when he has the fellows in to see him." + +"Well, I want him to get all the comfort he can out of the place, even if +the moths eat up every stick of furniture." + +"Yes, so do I. And of course you're wishing that you were there with +him!" March laughed guiltily. "Well, perhaps it was a crazy thing for us +to start off alone for Europe, at our age." + +"Nothing of the kind," he retorted in the necessity he perceived for +staying her drooping spirits. "I wouldn't be anywhere else on any +account. Isn't it perfectly delicious? It puts me in mind of that night +on the Lake Ontario boat, when we were starting for Montreal. There was +the same sort of red sunset, and the air wasn't a bit softer than this." + +He spoke of a night on their wedding-journey when they were sill new +enough from Europe to be comparing everything at home with things there. + +"Well, perhaps we shall get into the spirit of it again," she said, and +they talked a long time of the past. + +All the mechanical noises were muffled in the dull air, and the wash of +the ship's course through the waveless sea made itself pleasantly heard. +In the offing a steamer homeward bound swam smoothly by, so close that +her lights outlined her to the eye; she sent up some signal rockets that +soared against the purple heaven in green and crimson, and spoke to the +Norumbia in the mysterious mute phrases of ships that meet in the dark. + +Mrs. March wondered what had become of Burnamy; the promenades were much +freer now than they had been since the ship sailed; when she rose to go +below, she caught sight of Burnamy walking the deck transversely with +some lady. She clutched her husband's arm and stayed him in rich +conjecture. + +"Do you suppose he can have got her to walking with him already?" + +They waited till Burnamy and his companion came in sight again. She was +tilting forward, and turning from the waist, now to him and now from him. + +"No; it's that pivotal girl," said March; and his wife said, "Well, I'm +glad he won't be put down by them." + +In the music-room sat the people she meant, and at the instant she passed +on down the stairs, the daughter was saying to the father, "I don't see +why you didn't tell me sooner, papa." + +"It was such an unimportant matter that I didn't think to mention it. He +offered it, and I took it; that was all. What difference could it have +made to you?" + +"None. But one doesn't like to do any one an injustice." + +"I didn't know you were thinking anything about it." + +"No, of course not." + + + + +XIII. + +The voyage of the Norumbia was one of those which passengers say they +have never seen anything like, though for the first two or three days out +neither the doctor nor the deck-steward could be got, to prophesy when +the ship would be in. There was only a day or two when it could really be +called rough, and the sea-sickness was confined to those who seemed +wilful sufferers; they lay on the cushioned benching around the +stairs-landing, and subsisted on biscuit and beef tea without qualifying +the monotonous well-being of the other passengers, who passed without +noticing them. + +The second morning there was rain, and the air freshened, but the leaden +sea lay level as before. The sun shone in the afternoon; with the sunset +the fog came thick and white; the ship lowed dismally through the night; +from the dense folds of the mist answering noises called back to her. +Just before dark two men in a dory shouted up to her close under her +bows, and then melted out of sight; when the dark fell the lights of +fishing-schooners were seen, and their bells pealed; once loud cries from +a vessel near at hand made themselves heard. Some people in the +dining-saloon sang hymns; the smoking-room was dense with cigar fumes, +and the card-players dealt their hands in an atmosphere emulous of the +fog without. + +The Norumbia was off the Banks, and the second day of fog was cold as if +icebergs were haunting the opaque pallor around her. In the ranks of +steamer chairs people lay like mummies in their dense wrappings; in the +music-room the little children of travel discussed the different lines of +steamers on which they had crossed, and babes of five and seven disputed +about the motion on the Cunarders and White Stars; their nurses tried in +vain to still them in behalf of older passengers trying to write letters +there. + +By the next morning the ship had run out of the fog; and people who could +keep their feet said they were glad of the greater motion which they +found beyond the Banks. They now talked of the heat of the first days +out, and how much they had suffered; some who had passed the night on +board before sailing tried to impart a sense of their misery in trying to +sleep. + +A day or two later a storm struck the ship, and the sailors stretched +canvas along the weather promenade and put up a sheathing of boards +across the bow end to keep off the rain. Yet a day or two more and the +sea had fallen again and there was dancing on the widest space of the lee +promenade. + +The little events of the sea outside the steamer offered themselves in +their poor variety. Once a ship in the offing, with all its square sails +set, lifted them like three white towers from the deep. On the rim of the +ocean the length of some westward liner blocked itself out against the +horizon, and swiftly trailed its smoke out of sight. A few tramp +steamers, lounging and lunging through the trough of the sea, were +overtaken and left behind; an old brigantine passed so close that her +rusty iron sides showed plain, and one could discern the faces of the +people on board. + +The steamer was oftenest without the sign of any life beyond her. One day +a small bird beat the air with its little wings, under the roof of the +promenade, and then flittered from sight over the surface, of the waste; +a school of porpoises, stiff and wooden in their rise, plunged clumsily +from wave to wave. The deep itself had sometimes the unreality, the +artificiality of the canvas sea of the theatre. Commonly it was livid and +cold in color; but there was a morning when it was delicately misted, and +where the mist left it clear, it was blue and exquisitely iridescent +under the pale sun; the wrinkled waves were finely pitted by the falling +spray. These were rare moments; mostly, when it was not like painted +canvas, is was hard like black rock, with surfaces of smooth cleavage. +Where it met the sky it lay flat and motionless, or in the rougher +weather carved itself along the horizon in successions of surges. + +If the sun rose clear, it was overcast in a few hours; then the clouds +broke and let a little sunshine through, to close again before the dim +evening thickened over the waters. Sometimes the moon looked through the +ragged curtain of vapors; one night it seemed to shine till morning, and +shook a path of quicksilver from the horizon to the ship. Through every +change, after she had left the fog behind, the steamer drove on with the +pulse of her engines (that stopped no more than a man's heart stops) in a +course which had nothing to mark it but the spread of the furrows from +her sides, and the wake that foamed from her stern to the western verge +of the sea. + +The life of the ship, like the life of the sea, was a sodden monotony, +with certain events which were part of the monotony. In the morning the +little steward's bugle called the passengers from their dreams, and half +an hour later called them to their breakfast, after such as chose had +been served with coffee by their bedroom-stewards. Then they went on +deck, where they read, or dozed in their chairs, or walked up and down, +or stood in the way of those who were walking; or played shuffleboard and +ring-toss; or smoked, and drank whiskey and aerated waters over their +cards and papers in the smoking-room; or wrote letters in the saloon or +the music-room. At eleven o'clock they spoiled their appetites for lunch +with tea or bouillon to the music of a band of second-cabin stewards; at +one, a single blast of the bugle called them to lunch, where they glutted +themselves to the torpor from which they afterwards drowsed in their +berths or chairs. They did the same things in the afternoon that they had +done in the forenoon; and at four o'clock the deck-stewards came round +with their cups and saucers, and their plates of sandwiches, again to the +music of the band. There were two bugle-calls for dinner, and after +dinner some went early to bed, and some sat up late and had grills and +toast. At twelve the lights were put out in the saloons and the +smoking-rooms. + +There were various smells which stored themselves up in the consciousness +to remain lastingly relative to certain moments and places: a whiff of +whiskey and tobacco that exhaled from the door of the smoking-room; the +odor of oil and steam rising from the open skylights over the +engine-room; the scent of stale bread about the doors of the +dining-saloon. + +The life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, only more monotonous. The +walking was limited; the talk was the tentative talk of people aware that +there was no refuge if they got tired of one another. The flirting +itself, such as there was of it, must be carried on in the glare of the +pervasive publicity; it must be crude and bold, or not be at all. + +There seemed to be very little of it. There were not many young people on +board of saloon quality, and these were mostly girls. The young men were +mainly of the smoking-room sort; they seldom risked themselves among the +steamer chairs. It was gayer in the second cabin, and gayer yet in the +steerage, where robuster emotions were operated by the accordion. The +passengers there danced to its music; they sang to it and laughed to it +unabashed under the eyes of the first-cabin witnesses clustered along the +rail above the pit where they took their rude pleasures. + +With March it came to his spending many hours of each long, swift day in +his berth with a book under the convenient electric light. He was safe +there from the acquaintances which constantly formed themselves only to +fall into disintegration, and cling to him afterwards as inorganic +particles of weather-guessing, and smoking-room gossip about the ship's +run. + +In the earliest hours of the voyage he thought that he saw some faces of +the great world, the world of wealth and fashion; but these afterward +vanished, and left him to wonder where they hid themselves. He did not +meet them even in going to and from his meals; he could only imagine them +served in those palatial state-rooms whose interiors the stewards now and +then rather obtruded upon the public. There were people whom he +encountered in the promenades when he got up for the sunrise, and whom he +never saw at other times; at midnight he met men prowling in the dark +whom he never met by day. But none of these were people of the great +world. Before six o'clock they were sometimes second-cabin passengers, +whose barrier was then lifted for a little while to give them the freedom +of the saloon promenade. + +From time to time he thought he would look up his Ohioan, and revive from +a closer study of him his interest in the rare American who had never +been to Europe. But he kept with his elderly wife, who had the effect of +withholding him from March's advances. Young Mr. and Mrs. Leffers threw +off more and more their disguise of a long-married pair, and became +frankly bride and groom. They seldom talked with any one else, except at +table; they walked up and down together, smiling into each others faces; +they sat side by side in their steamer chairs; one shawl covered them +both, and there was reason to believe that they were holding each other's +hands under it. + +Mrs. Adding often took the chair beside Mrs. March when her husband was +straying about the ship or reading in his berth; and the two ladies must +have exchanged autobiographies, for Mrs. March was able to tell him just +how long Mrs. Adding had been a widow, what her husband died of, and what +had been done to save him; how she was now perfectly wrapt up in her boy, +and was taking him abroad, with some notion of going to Switzerland, +after the summer's travel, and settling down with him at school there. +She and Mrs. March became great friends; and Rose, as his mother called +him, attached himself reverently to March, not only as a celebrity of the +first grade in his quality of editor of 'Every Other Week', but as a sage +of wisdom and goodness, with whom he must not lose the chance of counsel +upon almost every hypothesis and exigency of life. + +March could not bring himself to place Burnamy quite where he belonged in +contemporary literature, when Rose put him very high in virtue of the +poem which he heard Burnamy was going to have printed in 'Every Other +Week', and of the book which he was going to have published; and he let +the boy bring to the young fellow the flattery which can come to any +author but once, in the first request for his autograph that Burnamy +confessed to have had. They were so near in age, though they were ten +years apart, that Rose stood much more in awe of Burnamy than of others +much more his seniors. He was often in the company of Kenby, whom he +valued next to March as a person acquainted with men; he consulted March +upon Kenby's practice of always taking up the language of the country he +visited, if it were only for a fortnight; and he conceived a higher +opinion of him from March's approval. + +Burnamy was most with Mrs. March, who made him talk about himself when he +supposed he was talking about literature, in the hope that she could get +him to talk about the Triscoes; but she listened in vain as he poured +out-his soul in theories of literary art, and in histories of what he had +written and what he meant to write. When he passed them where they sat +together, March heard the young fellow's perpetually recurring I, I, I, +my, my, my, me, me, me; and smiled to think how she was suffering under +the drip-drip of his innocent egotism. + +She bore in a sort of scientific patience his attentions to the pivotal +girl, and Miss Triscoe's indifference to him, in which a less penetrating +scrutiny could have detected no change from meal to meal. It was only at +table that she could see them together, or that she could note any break +in the reserve of the father and daughter. The signs of this were so fine +that when she reported them March laughed in scornful incredulity. But at +breakfast the third day out, the Triscoes, with the authority of people +accustomed to social consideration, suddenly turned to the Marches, and +began to make themselves agreeable; the father spoke to March of 'Every +Other Week', which he seemed to know of in its relation to him; and the +young girl addressed herself to Mrs. March's motherly sense not the less +acceptably because indirectly. She spoke of going out with her father for +an indefinite time, as if it were rather his wish than hers, and she made +some inquiries about places in Germany; they had never been in Germany. +They had some idea of Dresden; but the idea of Dresden with its American +colony seemed rather tiresome; and did Mrs. March know anything about +Weimar? + +Mrs. March was obliged to say that she knew nothing about anyplace in +Germany; and she explained perhaps too fully where and why she was going +with her husband. She fancied a Boston note in that scorn for the +tiresomeness of Dresden; but the girl's style was of New York rather than +of Boston, and her accent was not quite of either place. Mrs. March began +to try the Triscoes in this place and in that, to divine them and to +class them. She had decided from the first that they were society people, +but they were cultivated beyond the average of the few swells whom she +had met; and there had been nothing offensive in their manner of holding +themselves aloof from the other people at the table; they had a right to +do that if they chose. + +When the young Lefferses came in to breakfast, the talk went on between +these and the Marches; the Triscoes presently left the table, and Mrs. +March rose soon after, eager for that discussion of their behavior which +March knew he should not be able to postpone. + +He agreed with her that they were society people, but she could not at +once accept his theory that they had themselves been the objects of an +advance from them because of their neutral literary quality, through +which they were of no social world, but potentially common to any. Later +she admitted this, as she said, for the sake of argument, though what she +wanted him to see, now, was that this was all a step of the girl's toward +finding out something about Burnamy. + +The same afternoon, about the time the deck-steward was making his round +with his cups, Miss Triscoe abruptly advanced upon her from a neighboring +corner of the bulkhead, and asked, with the air of one accustomed to have +her advances gratefully received, if she might sit by her. The girl took +March's vacant chair, where she had her cup of bouillon, which she +continued to hold untasted in her hand after the first sip. Mrs. March +did the same with hers, and at the moment she had got very tired of doing +it, Burnamy came by, for the hundredth time that day, and gave her a +hundredth bow with a hundredth smile. He perceived that she wished to get +rid of her cup, and he sprang to her relief. + +"May I take yours too?" he said very passively to Miss Triscoe. + +"You are very good." she answered, and gave it. + +Mrs. March with a casual air suggested, "Do you know Mr. Burnamy, Miss +Triscoe?" The girl said a few civil things, but Burnamy did not try to +make talk with her while he remained a few moments before Mrs. March. The +pivotal girl came in sight, tilting and turning in a rare moment of +isolation at the corner of the music-room, and he bowed abruptly, and +hurried off to join her. + +Miss Triscoe did not linger; she alleged the necessity of looking up her +father, and went away with a smile so friendly that Mrs. March might +easily have construed it to mean that no blame attached itself to her in +Miss Triscoe's mind. + +"Then you don't feel that it was a very distinct success?" her husband +asked on his return. + +"Not on the surface," she said. + +"Better let ill enough alone," he advised. + +She did not heed him. "All the same she cares for him. The very fact that +she was so cold shows that." + +"And do you think her being cold will make him care for her?" + +"If she wants it to." + + + + +XIV. + +At dinner that day the question of 'The Maiden Knight' was debated among +the noises and silences of the band. Young Mrs. Leffers had brought the +book to the table with her; she said she had not been able to lay it down +before the last horn sounded; in fact she could have been seen reading it +to her husband where he sat under the same shawl, the whole afternoon. + +"Don't you think it's perfectly fascinating," she asked Mrs. Adding, with +her petted mouth. + +"Well," said the widow, doubtfully, "it's nearly a week since I read it, +and I've had time to get over the glow." + +"Oh, I could just read it forever!" the bride exclaimed. + +"I like a book," said her husband, "that takes me out of myself. I don't +want to think when I'm reading." + +March was going to attack this ideal, but he reflected in time that Mr. +Leffers had really stated his own motive in reading. He compromised. +"Well, I like the author to do my thinking for me." + +"Yes," said the other, "that is what I mean." + +"The question is whether 'The Maiden Knight' fellow does it," said Kenby, +taking duck and pease from the steward at his shoulder. + +"What my wife likes in it is to see what one woman can do and be +single-handed," said March. + +"No," his wife corrected him, "what a man thinks she can." + +"I suppose," said Mr. Triscoe, unexpectedly, "that we're like the English +in our habit of going off about a book like a train of powder." + +"If you'll say a row of bricks," March assented, "I'll agree with you. +It's certainly Anglo-Saxon to fall over one another as we do, when we get +going. It would be interesting to know just how much liking there is in +the popularity of a given book." + +"It's like the run of a song, isn't it?" Kenby suggested. "You can't +stand either, when it reaches a given point." + +He spoke to March and ignored Triscoe, who had hitherto ignored the rest +of the table. + +"It's very curious," March said. "The book or the song catches a mood, or +feeds a craving, and when one passes or the other is glutted--" + +"The discouraging part is," Triscoe put in, still limiting himself to the +Marches, "that it's never a question of real taste. The things that go +down with us are so crude, so coarsely spiced; they tickle such a vulgar +palate--Now in France, for instance," he suggested. + +"Well, I don't know," returned the editor. "After all, we eat a good deal +of bread, and we drink more pure water than any other people. Even when +we drink it iced, I fancy it isn't so bad as absinthe." + +The young bride looked at him gratefully, but she said, "If we can't get +ice-water in Europe, I don't know what Mr. Leffers will do," and the talk +threatened to pass among the ladies into a comparison of American and +European customs. + +Burnamy could not bear to let it. "I don't pretend to be very well up in +French literature," he began, "but I think such a book as 'The Maiden +Knight' isn't such a bad piece of work; people are liking a pretty +well-built story when they like it. Of course it's sentimental, and it +begs the question a good deal; but it imagines something heroic in +character, and it makes the reader imagine it too. The man who wrote that +book may be a donkey half the time, but he's a genius the other half. +By-and-by he'll do something--after he's come to see that his 'Maiden +Knight' was a fool--that I believe even you won't be down on, Mr. March, +if he paints a heroic type as powerfully as he does in this book." + +He spoke with the authority of a journalist, and though he deferred to +March in the end, he deferred with authority still. March liked him for +coming to the defence of a young writer whom he had not himself learned +to like yet. "Yes," he said, "if he has the power you say, and can keep +it after he comes to his artistic consciousness!" + +Mrs. Leffers, as if she thought things were going her way, smiled; Rose +Adding listened with shining eyes expectantly fixed on March; his mother +viewed his rapture with tender amusement. The steward was at Kenby's +shoulder with the salad and his entreating "Bleace!" and Triscoe seemed +to be questioning whether he should take any notice of Burnamy's general +disagreement. He said at last: "I'm afraid we haven't the documents. You +don't seem to have cared much for French books, and I haven't read 'The +Maiden Knight'." He added to March: "But I don't defend absinthe. +Ice-water is better. What I object to is our indiscriminate taste both +for raw whiskey--and for milk-and-water." + +No one took up the question again, and it was Kenby who spoke next. "The +doctor thinks, if this weather holds, that we shall be into Plymouth +Wednesday morning. I always like to get a professional opinion on the +ship's run." + +In the evening, as Mrs. March was putting away in her portfolio the +journal-letter which she was writing to send back from Plymouth to her +children, Miss Triscoe drifted to the place where she sat at their table +in the dining-room by a coincidence which they both respected as casual. + +"We had quite a literary dinner," she remarked, hovering for a moment +near the chair which she later sank into. "It must have made you feel +very much at home. Or perhaps you're so tired of it at home that you +don't talk about books." + +"We always talk shop, in some form or other," said Mrs. March. "My +husband never tires of it. A good many of the contributors come to us, +you know." + +"It must be delightful," said the girl. She added as if she ought to +excuse herself for neglecting an advantage that might have been hers if +she had chosen, "I'm sorry one sees so little of the artistic and +literary set. But New York is such a big place." + +"New York people seem to be very fond of it," said Mrs. March. "Those who +have always lived there." + +"We haven't always lived there," said the girl. "But I think one has a +good time there--the best time a girl can have. It's all very well coming +over for the summer; one has to spend the summer somewhere. Are you going +out for a long time?" + +"Only for the summer. First to Carlsbad." + +"Oh, yes. I suppose we shall travel about through Germany, and then go to +Paris. We always do; my father is very fond of it." + +"You must know it very well," said Mrs. March, aimlessly. + +"I was born there,--if that means knowing it. I lived there--till I was +eleven years old. We came home after my mother died." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. March. + +The girl did not go further into her family history; but by one of those +leaps which seem to women as logical as other progressions, she arrived +at asking, "Is Mr. Burnamy one of the contributors?" + +Mrs. March laughed. "He is going to be, as soon as his poem is printed." + +"Poem?" + +"Yes. Mr. March thinks it's very good." + +"I thought he spoke very nicely about 'The Maiden Knight'. And he has +been very nice to papa. You know they have the same room." + +"I think Mr. Burnamy told me," Mrs. March said. + +The girl went on. "He had the lower berth, and he gave it up to papa; +he's done everything but turn himself out of doors." + +"I'm sure he's been very glad," Mrs. March ventured on Burnamy's behalf, +but very softly, lest if she breathed upon these budding confidences they +should shrink and wither away. + +"I always tell papa that there's no country like America for real +unselfishness; and if they're all like that, in Chicago!" The girl +stopped, and added with a laugh, "But I'm always quarrelling with papa +about America." + +"We have a daughter living in Chicago," said Mrs. March, alluringly. + +But Miss Triscoe refused the bait, either because she had said all she +meant, or because she had said all she would, about Chicago, which Mrs. +March felt for the present to be one with Burnamy. She gave another of +her leaps. "I don't see why people are so anxious to get it like Europe, +at home. They say that there was a time when there were no chaperons +before hoops, you know." She looked suggestively at Mrs. March, resting +one slim hand on the table, and controlling her skirt with the other, as +if she were getting ready to rise at any moment. "When they used to sit +on their steps." + +"It was very pleasant before hoops--in every way," said Mrs. March. "I +was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always +simpler than in New York. I used to sit on our steps. It was delightful +for girls--the freedom." + +"I wish I had lived before hoops," said Miss Triscoe. + +"Well, there must be places where it's before hoops yet: Seattle, and +Portland, Oregon, for all I know," Mrs. March suggested. "And there must +be people in that epoch everywhere." + +"Like that young lady who twists and turns?" said Miss Triscoe, giving +first one side of her face and then the other. "They have a good time. I +suppose if Europe came to us in one way it had to come in another. If it +came in galleries and all that sort of thing, it had to come in +chaperons. You'll think I'm a great extremist, Mrs. March; but sometimes +I wish there was more America instead of less. I don't believe it's as +bad as people say. Does Mr. March," she asked, taking hold of the chair +with one hand, to secure her footing from any caprice of the sea, while +she gathered her skirt more firmly into the other, as she rose, "does he +think that America is going--all wrong?" + +"All wrong? How?" + +"Oh, in politics, don't you know. And government, and all that. And +bribing. And the lower classes having everything their own way. And the +horrid newspapers. And everything getting so expensive; and no regard for +family, or anything of that kind." + +Mrs. March thought she saw what Miss Triscoe meant, but she answered, +still cautiously, "I don't believe he does always. Though there are times +when he is very much disgusted. Then he says that he is getting too +old--and we always quarrel about that--to see things as they really are. +He says that if the world had been going the way that people over fifty +have always thought it was going, it would have gone to smash in the time +of the anthropoidal apes." + +"Oh, yes: Darwin," said Miss Triscoe, vaguely. "Well, I'm glad he doesn't +give it up. I didn't know but I was holding out just because I had argued +so much, and was doing it out of--opposition. Goodnight!" She called her +salutation gayly over her shoulder, and Mrs. March watched her gliding +out of the saloon with a graceful tilt to humor the slight roll of the +ship, and a little lurch to correct it, once or twice, and wondered if +Burnamy was afraid of her; it seemed to her that if she were a young man +she should not be afraid of Miss Triscoe. + +The next morning, just after she had arranged herself in her steamer +chair, he approached her, bowing and smiling, with the first of his many +bows and smiles for the day, and at the same time Miss Triscoe came +toward her from the opposite direction. She nodded brightly to him, and +he gave her a bow and smile too; he always had so many of them to spare. + +"Here is your chair!" Mrs. March called to her, drawing the shawl out of +the chair next her own. "Mr. March is wandering about the ship +somewhere." + +"I'll keep it for him," said Miss Triscoe, and as Burnamy offered to take +the shawl that hung in the hollow of her arm, she let it slip into his +hand with an "Oh; thank you," which seemed also a permission for him to +wrap it about her in the chair. + +He stood talking before the ladies, but he looked up and down the +promenade. The pivotal girl showed herself at the corner of the +music-room, as she had done the day before. At first she revolved there +as if she were shedding her light on some one hidden round the corner; +then she moved a few paces farther out and showed herself more obviously +alone. Clearly she was there for Burnamy to come and walk with her; Mrs. +March could see that, and she felt that Miss Triscoe saw it too. She +waited for her to dismiss him to his flirtation; but Miss Triscoe kept +chatting on, and he kept answering, and making no motion to get away. +Mrs. March began to be as sorry for her as she was ashamed for him. Then +she heard him saying, "Would you like a turn or two?" and Miss Triscoe +answering, "Why, yes, thank you," and promptly getting out of her chair +as if the pains they had both been at to get her settled in it were all +nothing. + +She had the composure to say, "You can leave your shawl with me, Miss +Triscoe," and to receive her fervent, "Oh, thank you," before they sailed +off together, with inhuman indifference to the girl at the corner of the +music-room. Then she sank into a kind of triumphal collapse, from which +she roused herself to point her husband to the chair beside her when he +happened along. + +He chose to be perverse about her romance. "Well, now, you had better let +them alone. Remember Kendricks." He meant one of their young friends +whose love-affair they had promoted till his happy marriage left them in +lasting doubt of what they had done. "My sympathies are all with the +pivotal girl. Hadn't she as much right to him, for the time being, or for +good and all, as Miss Triscoe?" + +"That depends upon what you think of Burnamy." + +"Well, I don't like to see a girl have a young man snatched away from her +just when she's made sure of him. How do you suppose she is feeling now?" + +"She isn't feeling at all. She's letting her revolving light fall upon +half a dozen other young men by this time, collectively or consecutively. +All that she wants to make sure of is that they're young men--or old +ones, even." + +March laughed, but not altogether at what his wife said. "I've been +having a little talk with Papa Triscoe, in the smoking-room." + +"You smell like it," said his wife, not to seem too eager: "Well?" + +"Well, Papa Triscoe seems to be in a pout. He doesn't think things are +going as they should in America. He hasn't been consulted, or if he has, +his opinion hasn't been acted upon." + +"I think he's horrid," said Mrs. March. "Who are they?" + +"I couldn't make out, and I couldn't ask. But I'll tell you what I +think." + +"What?" + +"That there's no chance for, Burnamy. He's taking his daughter out to +marry her to a crowned head." + + + + +XV. + +It was this afternoon that the dance took place on the south promenade. +Everybody came and looked, and the circle around the waltzers was three +or four deep. Between the surrounding heads and shoulders, the hats of +the young ladies wheeling and whirling, and the faces of the men who were +wheeling and whirling them, rose and sank with the rhythm of their steps. +The space allotted to the dancing was walled to seaward with canvas, and +was prettily treated with German, and American flags: it was hard to go +wrong with flags, Miss Triscoe said, securing herself under Mrs. March's +wing. + +Where they stood they could see Burnamy's face, flashing and flushing in +the dance; at the end of the first piece he came to them, and remained +talking and laughing till the music began again. + +"Don't you want to try it?" he asked abruptly of Miss Triscoe. + +"Isn't it rather--public?" she asked back. + +Mrs. March could feel the hand which the girl had put through her arm +thrill with temptation; but Burnamy could not. + +"Perhaps it is rather obvious," he said, and he made a long glide over +the deck to the feet of the pivotal girl, anticipating another young man +who was rapidly advancing from the opposite quarter. The next moment her +hat and his face showed themselves in the necessary proximity to each +other within the circle. + +"How well she dances!" said Miss Triscoe. + +"Do you think so? She looks as if she had been wound up and set going." + +"She's very graceful," the girl persisted. + +The day ended with an entertainment in the saloon for one of the marine +charities which address themselves to the hearts and pockets of +passengers on all steamers. There were recitations in English and German, +and songs from several people who had kindly consented, and ever more +piano performance. Most of those who took part were of the race gifted in +art and finance; its children excelled in the music, and its fathers +counted the gate-money during the last half of the programme, with an +audible clinking of the silver on the table before them. + +Miss Triscoe was with her father, and Mrs. March was herself chaperoned +by Mr. Burnamy: her husband had refused to come to the entertainment. She +hoped to leave Burnamy and Miss Triscoe together before the evening +ended; but Miss Triscoe merely stopped with her father, in quitting the +saloon, to laugh at some features of the entertainment, as people who +take no part in such things do; Burnamy stood up to exchange some +unimpassioned words with her, and then they said good-night. + +The next morning, at five o'clock, the Norumbia came to anchor in the +pretty harbor of Plymouth. In the cool early light the town lay distinct +along the shore, quaint with its small English houses, and stately with +come public edifices of unknown function on the uplands; a country-seat +of aristocratic aspect showed itself on one of the heights; on another +the tower of a country church peered over the tree-tops; there were lines +of fortifications, as peaceful, at their distance, as the stone walls +dividing the green fields. The very iron-clads in the harbor close at +hand contributed to the amiable gayety of the scene under the pale blue +English sky, already broken with clouds from which the flush of the +sunrise had not quite faded. The breath of the land came freshly out over +the water; one could almost smell the grass and the leaves. Gulls wheeled +and darted over the crisp water; the tones of the English voices on the +tender were pleasant to the ear, as it fussed and scuffled to the ship's +side. A few score of the passengers left her; with their baggage they +formed picturesque groups on the tender's deck, and they set out for the +shore waving their hands and their handkerchiefs to the friends they left +clustering along the rail of the Norumbia. Mr. and Mrs. Leffers bade +March farewell, in the final fondness inspired by his having coffee with +them before they left the ship; they said they hated to leave. + +The stop had roused everybody, and the breakfast tables were promptly +filled, except such as the passengers landing at Plymouth had vacated; +these were stripped of their cloths, and the remaining commensals placed +at others. The seats of the Lefferses were given to March's old Ohio +friend and his wife. He tried to engage them in the tally which began to +be general in the excitement of having touched land; but they shyly held +aloof. + +Some English newspapers had come aboard from the tug, and there was the +usual good-natured adjustment of the American self-satisfaction, among +those who had seen them, to the ever-surprising fact that our continent +is apparently of no interest to Europe. There were some meagre New York +stock-market quotations in the papers; a paragraph in fine print +announced the lynching of a negro in Alabama; another recorded a +coal-mining strike in Pennsylvania. + +"I always have to get used to it over again," said Kenby. "This is the +twentieth time I have been across, and I'm just as much astonished as I +was the first, to find out that they don't want to know anything about us +here." + +"Oh," said March, "curiosity and the weather both come from the west. San +Francisco wants to know about Denver, Denver about Chicago, Chicago about +New York, and New York about London; but curiosity never travels the +other way any more than a hot wave or a cold wave." + +"Ah, but London doesn't care a rap about Vienna," said Kenby. + +"Well, some pressures give out before they reach the coast, on our own +side. It isn't an infallible analogy." + +Triscoe was fiercely chewing a morsel, as if in haste to take part in the +discussion. He gulped it, and broke out. "Why should they care about us, +anyway?" + +March lightly ventured, "Oh, men and brothers, you know." + +"That isn't sufficient ground. The Chinese are men and brothers; so are +the South-Americans and Central-Africans, and Hawaiians; but we're not +impatient for the latest news about them. It's civilization that +interests civilization." + +"I hope that fact doesn't leave us out in the cold with the barbarians?" +Burnamy put in, with a smile. + +"Do you think we are civilized?" retorted the other. + +"We have that superstition in Chicago," said Burnamy. He added, still +smiling, "About the New-Yorkers, I mean." + +"You're more superstitious in Chicago than I supposed. New York is an +anarchy, tempered by vigilance committees." + +"Oh, I don't think you can say that," Kenby cheerfully protested, "since +the Reformers came in. Look at our streets!" + +"Yes, our streets are clean, for the time being, and when we look at them +we think we have made a clean sweep in our manners and morals. But how +long do you think it will be before Tammany will be in the saddle again?" + +"Oh, never in the world!" said the optimistic head of the table. + +"I wish I had your faith; or I should if I didn't feel that it is one of +the things that help to establish Tammanys with us. You will see our +Tammany in power after the next election." Kenby laughed in a +large-hearted incredulity; and his laugh was like fuel to the other's +flame. "New York is politically a mediaeval Italian republic, and it's +morally a frontier mining-town. Socially it's--" He stopped as if he +could not say what. + +"I think it's a place where you have a very nice time, papa," said his +daughter, and Burnamy smiled with her; not because he knew anything about +it. + +Her father went on as if he had not heard her. "It's as vulgar and crude +as money can make it. Nothing counts but money, and as soon as there's +enough, it counts for everything. In less than a year you'll have Tammany +in power; it won't be more than a year till you'll have it in society." + +"Oh no! Oh no!" came from Kenby. He did not care much for society, but he +vaguely respected it as the stronghold of the proprieties and the +amenities. + +"Isn't society a good place for Tammany to be in?" asked March in the +pause Triscoe let follow upon Kenby's laugh. + +"There's no reason why it shouldn't be. Society is as bad as all the rest +of it. And what New York is, politically, morally, and socially, the +whole country wishes to be and tries to be." + +There was that measure of truth in the words which silences; no one could +find just the terms of refutation. + +"Well," said Kenby at last, "it's a good thing there are so many lines to +Europe. We've still got the right to emigrate." + +"Yes, but even there we don't escape the abuse of our infamous newspapers +for exercising a man's right to live where he chooses. And there is no +country in Europe--except Turkey, or Spain--that isn't a better home for +an honest man than the United States." + +The Ohioan had once before cleared his throat as if he were going to +speak. Now, he leaned far enough forward to catch Triscoe's eye, and +said, slowly and distinctly: "I don't know just what reason you have to +feel as you do about the country. I feel differently about it +myself--perhaps because I fought for it." + +At first, the others were glad of this arrogance; it even seemed an +answer; but Burnamy saw Miss Triscoe's cheek, flush, and then he doubted +its validity. + +Triscoe nervously crushed a biscuit in his hand, as if to expend a +violent impulse upon it. He said, coldly, "I was speaking from that +stand-point." + +The Ohioan shrank back in his seat, and March felt sorry for him, though +he had put himself in the wrong. His old hand trembled beside his plate, +and his head shook, while his lips formed silent words; and his shy wife +was sharing his pain and shame. + +Kenby began to talk about the stop which the Norumbia was to make at +Cherbourg, and about what hour the next day they should all be in +Cuxhaven. Miss Triscoe said they had never come on the Hanseatic Line +before, and asked several questions. Her father did not speak again, and +after a little while he rose without waiting for her to make the move +from table; he had punctiliously deferred to her hitherto. Eltwin rose at +the same time, and March feared that he might be going to provoke another +defeat, in some way. + +Eltwin lifted his voice, and said, trying to catch Triscoe's eye, "I +think I ought to beg your pardon, sir. I do beg your pardon." + +March perceived that Eltwin wished to make the offer of his reparation as +distinct as his aggression had been; and now he quaked for Triscoe, whose +daughter he saw glance apprehensively at her father as she swayed aside +to let the two men come together. + +"That is all right, Colonel--" + +"Major," Eltwin conscientiously interposed. + +"Major," Triscoe bowed; and he put out his hand and grasped the hand +which had been tremulously rising toward him. "There can't be any doubt +of what we did, no matter what we've got." + +"No, no!" said the other, eagerly. "That was what I meant, sir. I don't +think as you do; but I believe that a man who helped to save the country +has a right to think what he pleases about it." + +Triscoe said, "That is all right, my dear sir. May I ask your regiment?" + +The Marches let the old fellows walk away together, followed by the wife +of the one and the daughter of the other. They saw the young girl making +some graceful overtures of speech to the elder woman as they went. + +"That was rather fine, my dear," said Mrs. March. + +"Well, I don't know. It was a little too dramatic, wasn't it? It wasn't +what I should have expected of real life." + +"Oh, you spoil everything! If that's the spirit you're going through +Europe in!" + +"It isn't. As soon as I touch European soil I shall reform." + + + + +XVI. + +That was not the first time General Triscoe had silenced question of his +opinions with the argument he had used upon Eltwin, though he was seldom +able to use it so aptly. He always found that people suffered, his belief +in our national degeneration much more readily when they knew that he had +left a diplomatic position in Europe (he had gone abroad as secretary of +a minor legation) to come home and fight for the Union. Some millions of +other men had gone into the war from the varied motives which impelled +men at that time; but he was aware that he had distinction, as a man of +property and a man of family, in doing so. His family had improved as +time passed, and it was now so old that back of his grandfather it was +lost in antiquity. This ancestor had retired from the sea and become a +merchant in his native Rhode Island port, where his son established +himself as a physician, and married the daughter of a former slave-trader +whose social position was the highest in the place; Triscoe liked to +mention his maternal grandfather when he wished a listener to realize +just how anomalous his part in a war against slavery was; it heightened +the effect of his pose. + +He fought gallantly through the war, and he was brevetted +Brigadier-General at the close. With this honor, and with the wound which +caused an almost imperceptible limp in his gait, he won the heart of a +rich New York girl, and her father set him up in a business, which was +not long in going to pieces in his hands. Then the young couple went to +live in Paris, where their daughter was born, and where the mother died +when the child was ten years old. A little later his father-in-law died, +and Triscoe returned to New York, where he found the fortune which his +daughter had inherited was much less than he somehow thought he had a +right to expect. + +The income from her fortune was enough to live on, and he did not go back +to Paris, where, in fact, things were not so much to his mind under the +Republic as they had been under the Second Empire. He was still willing +to do something for his country, however, and he allowed his name to be +used on a citizen's ticket in his district; but his provision-man was +sent to Congress instead. Then he retired to Rhode Island and attempted +to convert his shore property into a watering-place; but after being +attractively plotted and laid out with streets and sidewalks, it allured +no one to build on it except the birds and the chipmonks, and he came +back to New York, where his daughter had remained in school. + +One of her maternal aunts made her a coming-out tea, after she left +school; and she entered upon a series of dinners, dances, theatre +parties, and receptions of all kinds; but the tide of fairy gold pouring +through her fingers left no engagement-ring on them. She had no duties, +but she seldom got out of humor with her pleasures; she had some odd +tastes of her own, and in a society where none but the most serious books +were ever seriously mentioned she was rather fond of good ones, and had +romantic ideas of a life that she vaguely called bohemian. Her character +was never tested by anything more trying than the fear that her father +might take her abroad to live; he had taken her abroad several times for +the summer. + +The dreaded trial did not approach for several years after she had ceased +to be a bud; and then it came when her father was again willing to serve +his country in diplomacy, either at the Hague, or at Brussels, or even at +Berne. Reasons of political geography prevented his appointment anywhere, +but General Triscoe having arranged his affairs for going abroad on the +mission he had expected, decided to go without it. He was really very fit +for both of the offices he had sought, and so far as a man can deserve +public place by public service, he had deserved it. His pessimism was +uncommonly well grounded, and if it did not go very deep, it might well +have reached the bottom of his nature. + +His daughter had begun to divine him at the early age when parents +suppose themselves still to be mysteries to their children. She did not +think it necessary ever to explain him to others; perhaps she would not +have found it possible; and now after she parted from Mrs. Eltwin and +went to sit down beside Mrs. March she did not refer to her father. She +said how sweet she had found the old lady from Ohio; and what sort of +place did Mrs. March suppose it was where Mrs. Eltwin lived? They seemed +to have everything there, like any place. She had wanted to ask Mrs. +Eltwin if they sat on their steps; but she had not quite dared. + +Burnamy came by, slowly, and at Mrs. March's suggestion he took one of +the chairs on her other side, to help her and Miss Triscoe look at the +Channel Islands and watch the approach of the steamer to Cherbourg, where +the Norumbia was to land again. The young people talked across Mrs. March +to each other, and said how charming the islands were, in their +gray-green insubstantiality, with valleys furrowing them far inward, like +airy clefts in low banks of clouds. It seemed all the nicer not to know +just which was which; but when the ship drew nearer to Cherbourg, he +suggested that they could see better by going round to the other side of +the ship. Miss Triscoe, as at the other times when she had gone off with +Burnamy, marked her allegiance, to Mrs. March by leaving a wrap with her. + +Every one was restless in breaking with the old life at sea. There had +been an equal unrest when the ship first sailed; people had first come +aboard in the demoralization of severing their ties with home, and they +shrank from forming others. Then the charm of the idle, eventless life +grew upon them, and united them in a fond reluctance from the inevitable +end. + +Now that the beginning of the end had come, the pangs of disintegration +were felt in all the once-more-repellant particles. Burnamy and Miss +Triscoe, as they hung upon the rail, owned to each other that they hated +to have the voyage over. They had liked leaving Plymouth and being at sea +again; they wished that they need not be reminded of another debarkation +by the energy of the crane in hoisting the Cherbourg baggage from the +hold. + +They approved of the picturesqueness of three French vessels of war that +passed, dragging their kraken shapes low through the level water. At +Cherbourg an emotional French tender came out to the ship, very different +in her clamorous voices and excited figures from the steady self-control +of the English tender at Plymouth; and they thought the French +fortifications much more on show than the English had been. Nothing +marked their youthful date so much to the Marches, who presently joined +them, as their failure to realize that in this peaceful sea the great +battle between the Kearsarge and the Alabama was fought. The elder couple +tried to affect their imaginations with the fact which reanimated the +spectre of a dreadful war for themselves; but they had to pass on and, +leave the young people unmoved. + +Mrs. March wondered if they noticed the debarkation of the pivotal girl, +whom she saw standing on the deck of the tender, with her hands at her +waist, and giving now this side and now that side of her face to the +young men waving their hats to her from the rail of the ship. Burnamy was +not of their number, and he seemed not to know that the girl was leaving +him finally to Miss Triscoe. If Miss Triscoe knew it she did nothing the +whole of that long, last afternoon to profit by the fact. Burnamy spent a +great part of it in the chair beside Mrs. March, and he showed an +intolerable resignation to the girl's absence. + +"Yes," said March, taking the place Burnamy left at last, "that terrible +patience of youth!" + +"Patience? Folly! Stupidity! They ought to be together every instant! Do +they suppose that life is full of such chances? Do they think that fate +has nothing to do but--" + +She stopped for a fit climax, and he suggested, "Hang round and wait on +them?" + +"Yes! It's their one chance in a life-time, probably." + +"Then you've quite decided that they're in love?" He sank comfortably +back, and put up his weary legs on the chair's extension with the +conviction that love had no such joy as that to offer. + +"I've decided that they're intensely interested in each other." + +"Then what more can we ask of them? And why do you care what they do or +don't do with their chance? Why do you wish their love well, if it's +that? Is marriage such a very certain good?" + +"It isn't all that it might be, but it's all that there is. What would +our lives have been without it?" she retorted. + +"Oh, we should have got on. It's such a tremendous risk that we, ought to +go round begging people to think twice, to count a hundred, or a +nonillion, before they fall in love to the marrying-point. I don't mind +their flirting; that amuses them; but marrying is a different thing. I +doubt if Papa Triscoe would take kindly to the notion of a son-in-law he +hadn't selected himself, and his daughter doesn't strike me as a young +lady who has any wisdom to throw away on a choice. She has her little +charm; her little gift of beauty, of grace, of spirit, and the other +things that go with her age and sex; but what could she do for a fellow +like Burnamy, who has his way to make, who has the ladder of fame to +climb, with an old mother at the bottom of it to look after? You wouldn't +want him to have an eye on Miss Triscoe's money, even if she had money, +and I doubt if she has much. It's all very pretty to have a girl like her +fascinated with a youth of his simple traditions; though Burnamy isn't +altogether pastoral in his ideals, and he looks forward to a place in the +very world she belongs to. I don't think it's for us to promote the +affair." + +"Well, perhaps you're right," she sighed. "I will let them alone from +this out. Thank goodness, I shall not have them under my eyes very long." + +"Oh, I don't think there's any harm done yet," said her husband, with a +laugh. + +At dinner there seemed so little harm of the kind he meant that she +suffered from an illogical disappointment. The young people got through +the meal with no talk that seemed inductive; Burnamy left the table +first, and Miss Triscoe bore his going without apparent discouragement; +she kept on chatting with March till his wife took him away to their +chairs on deck. + +There were a few more ships in sight than there were in mid-ocean; but +the late twilight thickened over the North Sea quite like the night after +they left New York, except that it was colder; and their hearts turned to +their children, who had been in abeyance for the week past, with a +remorseful pang. "Well," she said, "I wish we were going to be in New York +to-morrow, instead of Hamburg." + +"Oh, no! Oh, no!" he protested. "Not so bad as that, my dear. This is the +last night, and it's hard to manage, as the last night always is. I +suppose the last night on earth--" + +"Basil!" she implored. + +"Well, I won't, then. But what I want is to see a Dutch lugger. I've +never seen a Dutch lugger, and--" + +She suddenly pressed his arm, and in obedience to the signal he was +silent; though it seemed afterwards that he ought to have gone on talking +as if he did not see Burnamy and Miss Triscoe swinging slowly by. They +were walking close together, and she was leaning forward and looking up +into his face while he talked. + +"Now," Mrs. March whispered, long after they were out of hearing, "let us +go instantly. I wouldn't for worlds have them see us here when they get +found again. They would feel that they had to stop and speak, and that +would spoil everything. Come!" + + + + +XVII. + +Burnamy paused in a flow of autobiography, and modestly waited for Miss +Triscoe's prompting. He had not to wait long. + +"And then, how soon did you think of printing your things in a book?" + +"Oh, about as soon as they began to take with the public." + +"How could you tell that they were-taking?" + +"They were copied into other papers, and people talked about them." + +"And that was what made Mr. Stoller want you to be his secretary?" + +"I don't believe it was. The theory in the office was that he didn't +think much of them; but he knows I can write shorthand, and put things +into shape." + +"What things?" + +"Oh--ideas. He has a notion of trying to come forward in politics. He +owns shares in everything but the United States Senate--gas, electricity, +railroads, aldermen, newspapers--and now he would like some Senate. +That's what I think." + +She did not quite understand, and she was far from knowing that this +cynic humor expressed a deadlier pessimism than her father's fiercest +accusals of the country. "How fascinating it is!" she said, innocently. + +"And I suppose they all envy your coming out?" + +"In the office?" + +"Yes. I should envy, them--staying." + +Burnamy laughed. "I don't believe they envy me. It won't be all roses for +me--they know that. But they know that I can take care of myself if it +isn't." He remembered something one of his friends in the office had said +of the painful surprise the Bird of Prey would feel if he ever tried his +beak on him in the belief that he was soft. + +She abruptly left the mere personal question. "And which would you rather +write: poems or those kind of sketches?" + +"I don't know," said Burnamy, willing to talk of himself on any terms. "I +suppose that prose is the thing for our time, rather more; but there are +things you can't say in prose. I used to write a great deal of verse in +college; but I didn't have much luck with editors till Mr. March took +this little piece for 'Every Other Week'." + +"Little? I thought it was a long poem!" + +Burnamy laughed at the notion. "It's only eight lines." + +"Oh!" said the girl. "What is it about?" + +He yielded to the temptation with a weakness which he found incredible in +a person of his make. "I can repeat it if you won't give me away to Mrs. +March." + +"Oh, no indeed!" He said the lines over to her very simply and well. +"They are beautiful--beautiful!" + +"Do you think so?" he gasped, in his joy at her praise. + +"Yes, lovely. Do you know, you are the first literary man--the only +literary man--I ever talked with. They must go out--somewhere! Papa must +meet them at his clubs. But I never do; and so I'm making the most of +you." + +"You can't make too much of me, Miss Triscoe," said Burnamy. + +She would not mind his mocking. "That day you spoke about 'The Maiden +Knight', don't you know, I had never heard any talk about books in that +way. I didn't know you were an author then." + +"Well, I'm not much of an author now," he said, cynically, to retrieve +his folly in repeating his poem to her. + +"Oh, that will do for you to say. But I know what Mrs. March thinks." + +He wished very much to know what Mrs. March thought, too; 'Every Other +Week' was such a very good place that he could not conscientiously +neglect any means of having his work favorably considered there; if Mrs. +March's interest in it would act upon her husband, ought not he to know +just how much she thought of him as a writer? "Did she like the poem." + +Miss Triscoe could not recall that Mrs. March had said anything about the +poem, but she launched herself upon the general current of Mrs. March's +liking for Burnamy. "But it wouldn't do to tell you all she said!" This +was not what he hoped, but he was richly content when she returned to his +personal history. "And you didn't know any one when, you went up to +Chicago from--" + +"Tippecanoe? Not exactly that. I wasn't acquainted with any one in the +office, but they had printed somethings of mine, and they were willing to +let me try my hand. That was all I could ask." + +"Of course! You knew you could do the rest. Well, it is like a romance. A +woman couldn't have such an adventure as that!" sighed the girl. + +"But women do!" Burnamy retorted. "There is a girl writing on the paper +now--she's going to do the literary notices while I'm gone--who came to +Chicago from Ann Arbor, with no more chance than I had, and who's made +her way single-handed from interviewing up." + +"Oh," said Miss Triscoe, with a distinct drop in her enthusiasm. "Is she +nice?" + +"She's mighty clever, and she's nice enough, too, though the kind of +journalism that women do isn't the most dignified. And she's one of the +best girls I know, with lots of sense." + +"It must be very interesting," said Miss Triscoe, with little interest in +the way she said it. "I suppose you're quite a little community by +yourselves." + +"On the paper?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, some of us know one another, in the office, but most of us don't. +There's quite a regiment of people on a big paper. If you'd like to come +out," Burnamy ventured, "perhaps you could get the Woman's Page to do." + +"What's that?" + +"Oh, fashion; and personal gossip about society leaders; and recipes for +dishes and diseases; and correspondence on points of etiquette." + +He expected her to shudder at the notion, but she merely asked, "Do women +write it?" + +He laughed reminiscently. "Well, not always. We had one man who used to +do it beautifully--when he was sober. The department hasn't had any +permanent head since." + +He was sorry he had said this, but it did not seem to shock her, and no +doubt she had not taken it in fully. She abruptly left the subject. "Do +you know what time we really get in to-morrow?" + +"About one, I believe--there's a consensus of stewards to that effect, +anyway." After a pause he asked, "Are you likely to be in Carlsbad?" + +"We are going to Dresden, first, I believe. Then we may go on down to +Vienna. But nothing is settled, yet." + +"Are you going direct to Dresden?" + +"I don't know. We may stay in Hamburg a day or two." + +"I've got to go straight to Carlsbad. There's a sleeping-car that will +get me there by morning: Mr. Stoller likes zeal. But I hope you'll let me +be of use to you any way I can, before we part tomorrow." + +"You're very kind. You've been very good already--to papa." He protested +that he had not been at all good. "But he's used to taking care of +himself on the other side. Oh, it's this side, now!" + +"So it is! How strange that seems! It's actually Europe. But as long as +we're at sea, we can't realize it. Don't you hate to have experiences +slip through your fingers?" + +"I don't know. A girl doesn't have many experiences of her own; they're +always other people's." + +This affected Burnamy as so profound that he did not question its truth. +He only suggested, "Well; sometimes they make other people have the +experiences." + +Whether Miss Triscoe decided that this was too intimate or not she left +the question. "Do you understand German?" + +"A little. I studied it at college, and I've cultivated a sort of +beer-garden German in Chicago. I can ask for things." + +"I can't, except in French, and that's worse than English, in Germany, I +hear." + +"Then you must let me be your interpreter up to the last moment. Will +you?" + +She did not answer. "It must be rather late, isn't it?" she asked. He let +her see his watch, and she said, "Yes, it's very late," and led the way +within. "I must look after my packing; papa's always so prompt, and I +must justify myself for making him let me give up my maid when we left +home; we expect to get one in Dresden. Good-night!" + +Burnamy looked after her drifting down their corridor, and wondered +whether it would have been a fit return for her expression of a sense of +novelty in him as a literary man if he had told her that she was the +first young lady he had known who had a maid. The fact awed him; Miss +Triscoe herself did not awe him so much. + + + + +XVIII. + +The next morning was merely a transitional period, full of turmoil and +disorder, between the broken life of the sea and the untried life of the +shore. No one attempted to resume the routine of the voyage. People went +and came between their rooms and the saloons and the decks, and were no +longer careful to take their own steamer chairs when they sat down for a +moment. + +In the cabins the berths were not made up, and those who remained below +had to sit on their hard edges, or on the sofas, which were cumbered +with, hand-bags and rolls of shawls. At an early hour after breakfast the +bedroom stewards began to get the steamer trunks out and pile them in the +corridors; the servants all became more caressingly attentive; and people +who had left off settling the amount of the fees they were going to give, +anxiously conferred together. The question whether you ought ever to give +the head steward anything pressed crucially at the early lunch, and Kenby +brought only a partial relief by saying that he always regarded the head +steward as an officer of the ship. March made the experiment of offering +him six marks, and the head steward took them quite as if he were not an +officer of the ship. He also collected a handsome fee for the music, +which is the tax levied on all German ships beyond the tolls exacted on +the steamers of other nations. + +After lunch the flat shore at Cuxhaven was so near that the summer +cottages of the little watering-place showed through the warm drizzle +much like the summer cottages of our own shore, and if it had not been +for the strange, low sky, the Americans might easily have fancied +themselves at home again. + +Every one waited on foot while the tender came out into the stream where +the Norumbia had dropped anchor. People who had brought their +hand-baggage with them from their rooms looked so much safer with it that +people who had left theirs to their stewards had to go back and pledge +them afresh not to forget it. The tender came alongside, and the transfer +of the heavy trunks began, but it seemed such an endless work that every +one sat down in some other's chair. At last the trunks were all on the +tender, and the bareheaded stewards began to run down the gangways with +the hand-baggage. "Is this Hoboken?" March murmured in his wife's ear, +with a bewildered sense of something in the scene like the reversed +action of the kinematograph. + +On the deck of the tender there was a brief moment of reunion among the +companions of the voyage, the more intimate for their being crowded +together under cover from the drizzle which now turned into a dashing +rain. Burnamy's smile appeared, and then Mrs. March recognized Miss +Triscoe and her father in their travel dress; they were not far from +Burnamy's smile, but he seemed rather to have charge of the Eltwins, whom +he was helping look after their bags and bundles. Rose Adding was talking +with Kenby, and apparently asking his opinion of something; Mrs. Adding +sat near them tranquilly enjoying her son. + +Mrs. March made her husband identify their baggage, large and small, and +after he had satisfied her, he furtively satisfied himself by a fresh +count that it was all there. But he need not have taken the trouble; +their long, calm bedroom-steward was keeping guard over it; his eyes +expressed a contemptuous pity for their anxiety, whose like he must have +been very tired of. He brought their handbags into the customs-room at +the station where they landed; and there took a last leave and a last fee +with unexpected cordiality. + +Again their companionship suffered eclipse in the distraction which the +customs inspectors of all countries bring to travellers; and again they +were united during the long delay in the waiting-room, which was also the +restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors--the +shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German +voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars. +Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a +letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay, +Krahnay!" When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and +shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed gratefully, and began to cry, +"Kren! Kren!" But whether Mr. Crane got his letter or not, he never knew. + +People were swarming at the window of the telegraph-office, and sending +home cablegrams to announce their safe arrival; March could not forbear +cabling to his son, though he felt it absurd. There was a great deal of +talking, but no laughing, except among the Americans, and the girls +behind the bar who tried to understand, what they wanted, and then served +them with what they chose for them. Otherwise the Germans, though +voluble, were unsmiling, and here on the threshold of their empire the +travellers had their first hint of the anxious mood which seems habitual +with these amiable people. + +Mrs. Adding came screaming with glee to March where he sat with his wife, +and leaned over her son to ask, "Do you know what lese-majesty is? Rose +is afraid I've committed it!" + +"No, I don't," said March. "But it's the unpardonable sin. What have you +been doing?" + +"I asked the official at the door when our train would start, and when he +said at half past three, I said, 'How tiresome!' Rose says the railroads +belong to the state here, and that if I find fault with the time-table, +it's constructive censure of the Emperor, and that's lese-majesty." She +gave way to her mirth, while the boy studied March's face with an +appealing smile. + +"Well, I don't think you'll be arrested this time, Mrs. Adding; but I +hope it will be a warning to Mrs. March. She's been complaining of the +coffee." + +"Indeed I shall say what I like," said Mrs. March. "I'm an American." + +"Well, you'll find you're a German, if you like to say anything +disagreeable about the coffee in the restaurant of the Emperor's railroad +station; the first thing you know I shall be given three months on your +account." + +Mrs. Adding asked: "Then they won't punish ladies? There, Rose! I'm safe, +you see; and you're still a minor, though you are so wise for your +years." + +She went back to her table, where Kenby came and sat down by her. + +"I don't know that I quite like her playing on that sensitive child,", +said Mrs. March. "And you've joined with her in her joking. Go and speak, +to him!" + +The boy was slowly following his mother, with his head fallen. March +overtook him, and he started nervously at the touch of a hand on his +shoulder, and then looked gratefully up into the man's face. March tried +to tell him what the crime of lese-majesty was, and he said: "Oh, yes. I +understood that. But I got to thinking; and I don't want my mother to +take any risks." + +"I don't believe she will, really, Rose. But I'll speak to her, and tell +her she can't be too cautious." + +"Not now, please!" the boy entreated. + +"Well, I'll find another chance," March assented. He looked round and +caught a smiling nod from Burnamy, who was still with the Eltwins; the +Triscoes were at a table by themselves; Miss Triseoe nodded too, but her +father appeared not to see March. "It's all right, with Rose," he said, +when he sat down again by his wife; "but I guess it's all over with +Burnamy," and he told her what he had seen. "Do you think it came to any +displeasure between them last night? Do you suppose he offered himself, +and she--" + +"What nonsense!" said Mrs. March, but she was not at peace. "It's her +father who's keeping her away from him." + +"I shouldn't mind that. He's keeping her away from us, too." But at that +moment Miss Triscoe as if she had followed his return from afar, came +over to speak to his wife. She said they were going on to Dresden that +evening, and she was afraid they might have no chance to see each other +on the train or in Hamburg. March, at this advance, went to speak with +her father; he found him no more reconciled to Europe than America. + +"They're Goths," he said of the Germans. "I could hardly get that stupid +brute in the telegraph-office to take my despatch." + +On his way back to his wife March met Miss Triscoe; he was not altogether +surprised to meet Burnamy with her, now. The young fellow asked if he +could be of any use to him, and then he said he would look him up in the +train. He seemed in a hurry, but when he walked away with Miss Triscoe he +did not seem in a hurry. + +March remarked upon the change to his wife, and she sighed, "Yes, you can +see that as far as they're concerned." + +"It's a great pity that there should be parents to complicate these +affairs," he said. "How simple it would be if there were no parties to +them but the lovers! But nature is always insisting upon fathers and +mothers, and families on both sides." + + + + +XIX. + +The long train which they took at last was for the Norumbia's people +alone, and it was of several transitional and tentative types of cars. +Some were still the old coach-body carriages; but most were of a strange +corridor arrangement, with the aide at the aide, and the seats crossing +from it, with compartments sometimes rising to the roof, and sometimes +rising half-way. No two cars seemed quite alike, but all were very +comfortable; and when the train began to run out through the little +sea-side town into the country, the old delight of foreign travel began. +Most of the houses were little and low and gray, with ivy or flowering +vines covering their walls to their browntiled roofs; there was here and +there a touch of Northern Gothic in the architecture; but usually where +it was pretentious it was in the mansard taste, which was so bad with us +a generation ago, and is still very bad in Cuxhaven. + +The fields, flat and wide, were dotted with familiar shapes of Holstein +cattle, herded by little girls, with their hair in yellow pigtails. The +gray, stormy sky hung low, and broke in fitful rains; but perhaps for the +inclement season of mid-summer it was not very cold. Flowers were +blooming along the embankments and in the rank green fields with a dogged +energy; in the various distances were groups of trees embowering cottages +and even villages, and always along the ditches and watercourses were +double lines of low willows. At the first stop the train made, the +passengers flocked to the refreshment-booth, prettily arranged beside the +station, where the abundance of the cherries and strawberries gave proof +that vegetation was in other respects superior to the elements. But it +was not of the profusion of the sausages, and the ham which openly in +slices or covertly in sandwiches claimed its primacy in the German +affections; every form of this was flanked by tall glasses of beer. + +A number of the natives stood by and stared unsmiling at the train, which +had broken out in a rash of little American flags at every window. This +boyish display, which must have made the Americans themselves laugh, if +their sense of humor had not been lost in their impassioned patriotism, +was the last expression of unity among the Norumbia's passengers, and +they met no more in their sea-solidarity. Of their table acquaintance the +Marches saw no one except Burnamy, who came through the train looking for +them. He said he was in one of the rear cars with the Eltwins, and was +going to Carlsbad with them in the sleeping-car train leaving Hamburg at +seven. He owned to having seen the Triscoes since they had left Cuxhaven; +Mrs. March would not suffer herself to ask him whether they were in the +same carriage with the Eltwins. He had got a letter from Mr. Stoller at +Cuxhaven, and he begged the Marches to let him engage rooms for them at +the hotel where he was going to stay with him. + +After they reached Hamburg they had flying glimpses of him and of others +in the odious rivalry to get their baggage examined first which seized +upon all, and in which they no longer knew one another, but selfishly +struggled for the good-will of porters and inspectors. There was really +no such haste; but none could govern themselves against the general +frenzy. With the porter he secured March conspired and perspired to win +the attention of a cold but not unkindly inspector. The officer opened +one trunk, and after a glance at it marked all as passed, and then there +ensued a heroic strife with the porter as to the pieces which were to go +to the Berlin station for their journey next day, and the pieces which +were to go to the hotel overnight. At last the division was made; the +Marches got into a cab of the first class; and the porter, crimson and +steaming at every pore from the physical and intellectual strain, went +back into the station. + +They had got the number of their cab from the policeman who stands at the +door of all large German stations and supplies the traveller with a +metallic check for the sort of vehicle he demands. They were not proud, +but it seemed best not to risk a second-class cab in a strange city, and +when their first-class cab came creaking and limping out of the rank, +they saw how wise they had been, if one of the second class could have +been worse. + +As they rattled away from the station they saw yet another kind of +turnout, which they were destined to see more and more in the German +lands. It was that team of a woman harnessed with a dog to a cart which +the women of no other country can see without a sense of personal insult. +March tried to take the humorous view, and complained that they had not +been offered the choice of such an equipage by the policeman, but his +wife would not be amused. She said that no country which suffered such a +thing could be truly civilized, though he made her observe that no city +in the world, except Boston or Brooklyn, was probably so thoroughly +trolleyed as Hamburg. The hum of the electric car was everywhere, and +everywhere the shriek of the wires overhead; batlike flights of +connecting plates traversed all the perspectives through which they drove +to the pleasant little hotel they had chosen. + + + + +XX. + +On one hand their windows looked toward a basin of the Elbe, where +stately white swans were sailing; and on the other to the new Rathhaus, +over the trees that deeply shaded the perennial mud of a cold, dim public +garden, where water-proof old women and impervious nurses sat, and +children played in the long twilight of the sour, rain-soaked summer of +the fatherland. It was all picturesque, and within-doors there was the +novelty of the meagre carpets and stalwart furniture of the Germans, and +their beds, which after so many ages of Anglo-Saxon satire remain +immutably preposterous. They are apparently imagined for the stature of +sleepers who have shortened as they broadened; their pillows are +triangularly shaped to bring the chin tight upon the breast under the +bloated feather bulk which is meant for covering, and which rises over +the sleeper from a thick substratum of cotton coverlet, neatly buttoned +into the upper sheet, with the effect of a portly waistcoat. + +The hotel was illumined by the kindly splendor of the uniformed portier, +who had met the travellers at the door, like a glowing vision of the +past, and a friendly air diffused itself through the whole house. At the +dinner, which, if not so cheap as they had somehow hoped, was by no means +bad, they took counsel with the English-speaking waiter as to what +entertainment Hamburg could offer for the evening, and by the time they +had drunk their coffee they had courage for the Circus Renz, which seemed +to be all there was. + +The conductor of the trolley-car, which they hailed at the street corner, +stopped it and got off the platform, and stood in the street until they +were safely aboard, without telling them to step lively, or pulling them +up the steps; or knuckling them in the back to make them move forward. He +let them get fairly seated before he started the car, and so lost the fun +of seeing them lurch and stagger violently, and wildly clutch each other +for support. The Germans have so little sense of humor that probably no +one in the car would have been amused to see the strangers flung upon the +floor. No one apparently found it droll that the conductor should touch +his cap to them when he asked for their fare; no one smiled at their +efforts to make him understand where they wished to go, and he did not +wink at the other passengers in trying to find out. Whenever the car +stopped he descended first, and did not remount till the dismounting +passenger had taken time to get well away from it. When the Marches got +into the wrong car in coming home, and were carried beyond their street, +the conductor would not take their fare. + +The kindly civility which environed them went far to alleviate the +inclemency of the climate; it began to rain as soon as they left the +shelter of the car, but a citizen of whom they asked the nearest way to +the Circus Renz was so anxious to have them go aright that they did not +mind the wet, and the thought of his goodness embittered March's +self-reproach for under-tipping the sort of gorgeous heyduk, with a staff +like a drum-major's, who left his place at the circus door to get their +tickets. He brought them back with a magnificent bow, and was then as +visibly disappointed with the share of the change returned to him as a +child would have been. + +They went to their places with the sting of his disappointment rankling +in their hearts. "One ought always to overpay them," March sighed, "and I +will do it from this time forth; we shall not be much the poorer for it. +That heyduk is not going to get off with less than a mark when we come +out." As an earnest of his good faith he gave the old man who showed them +to their box a tip that made him bow double, and he bought every +conceivable libretto and play-bill offered him at prices fixed by his +remorse. + +"One ought to do it," he said. "We are of the quality of good geniuses to +these poor souls; we are Fortune in disguise; we are money found in the +road. It is an accursed system, but they are more its victims than we." +His wife quite agreed with him, and with the same good conscience between +them they gave themselves up to the pure joy which the circus, of all +modern entertainments, seems alone to inspire. The house was full from +floor to roof when they came ins and every one was intent upon the two +Spanish clowns, Lui-Lui and Soltamontes, whose drolleries spoke the +universal language of circus humor, and needed no translation into either +German or English. They had missed by an event or two the more patriotic +attraction of "Miss Darlings, the American Star," as she was billed in +English, but they were in time for one of those equestrian performances +which leave the spectator almost exanimate from their prolixity, and the +pantomimic piece which closed the evening. + +This was not given until nearly the whole house had gone out and stayed +itself with beer and cheese and ham and sausage, in the restaurant which +purveys these light refreshments in the summer theatres all over Germany. +When the people came back gorged to the throat, they sat down in the +right mood to enjoy the allegory of "The Enchanted Mountain's Fantasy; +the Mountain episodes; the High-interesting Sledges-Courses on the Steep +Acclivities; the Amazing-Up-rush of the thence plunging-Four Trains, +which arrive with Lightnings-swiftness at the Top of the +over-40-feet-high Mountain-the Highest Triumph of the To-day's +Circus-Art; the Sledge-journey in the Wizard-mountain, and the Fairy +Ballet in the Realm of the Ghost-prince, with Gold and Silver, Jewel, +Bloomghosts, Gnomes, Gnomesses, and Dwarfs, in never-till-now-seen +Splendor of Costume." The Marches were happy in this allegory, and +happier in the ballet, which is everywhere delightfully innocent, and +which here appealed with the large flat feet and the plain good faces of +the 'coryphees' to all that was simplest and sweetest in their natures. +They could not have resisted, if they had wished, that environment, of +good-will; and if it had not been for the disappointed heyduk, they would +have got home from their evening at the Circus Renz without a pang. + +They looked for him everywhere when they came out, but he had vanished, +and they were left with a regret which, if unavailing, was not too +poignant. In spite of it they had still an exhilaration in their release +from the companionship of their fellow-voyagers which they analyzed as +the psychical revulsion from the strain of too great interest in them. +Mrs. March declared that for the present, at least, she wanted Europe +quite to themselves; and she said that not even for the pleasure of +seeing Burnamy and Miss Triscoe come into their box together world she +have suffered an American trespass upon their exclusive possession of the +Circus Renz. + +In the audience she had seen German officers for the first time in +Hamburg, and she meant, if unremitting question could bring out the +truth, to know why she had not met any others. She had read much of the +prevalence and prepotence of the German officers who would try to push +her off the sidewalk, till they realized that she was an American woman, +and would then submit to her inflexible purpose of holding it. But she +had been some seven or eight hours in Hamburg, and nothing of the kind +had happened to her, perhaps because she had hardly yet walked a block in +the city streets, but perhaps also because there seemed to be very few +officers or military of any kind in Hamburg. + + + + +XXI. + +Their absence was plausibly explained, the next morning, by the young +German friend who came in to see the Marches at breakfast. He said +Hamburg had been so long a free republic that the presence of a large +imperial garrison was distasteful to the people, and as a matter of fact +there were very few soldiers quartered there, whether the authorities +chose to indulge the popular grudge or not. He was himself in a joyful +flutter of spirits, for he had just the day before got his release from +military service. He gave them a notion of what the rapture of a man +reprieved from death might be, and he was as radiantly happy in the ill +health which had got him his release as if it had been the greatest +blessing of heaven. He bubbled over with smiling regrets that he should +be leaving his home for the first stage of the journey which he was to +take in search of strength, just as they had come, and he pressed them to +say if there were not something that he could do for them. + +"Yes," said Mrs. March, with a promptness surprising to her husband, who +could think of nothing; "tell us where Heinrich Heine lived when he was +in Hamburg. My husband has always had a great passion for him and wants +to look him up everywhere." + +March had forgotten that Heine ever lived in Hamburg, and the young man +had apparently never known it. His face fell; he wished to make Mrs. +March believe that it was only Heine's uncle who had lived there; but she +was firm; and when he had asked among the hotel people he came back +gladly owning that he was wrong, and that the poet used to live in +Konigstrasse, which was very near by, and where they could easily know +the house by his bust set in its front. The portier and the head waiter +shared his ecstasy in so easily obliging the friendly American pair, and +joined him in minutely instructing the driver when they shut them into +their carriage. + +They did not know that his was almost the only laughing face they should +see in the serious German Empire; just as they did not know that it +rained there every day. As they drove off in the gray drizzle with the +unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine, they bade +their driver be very slow in taking them through Konigstrasse, so that he +should by no means Miss Heine's dwelling, and he duly stopped in front of +a house bearing the promised bust. They dismounted in order to revere it +more at their ease, but the bust proved, by an irony bitterer than the +sick, heart-breaking, brilliant Jew could have imagined in his cruelest +moment, to be that of the German Milton, the respectable poet Klopstock, +whom Heine abhorred and mocked so pitilessly. + +In fact it was here that the good, much-forgotten Klopstock dwelt, when +he came home to live with a comfortable pension from the Danish +government; and the pilgrims to the mistaken shrine went asking about +among the neighbors in Konigstrasse, for some manner of house where Heine +might have lived; they would have been willing to accept a flat, or any +sort of two-pair back. The neighbors were somewhat moved by the anxiety +of the strangers; but they were not so much moved as neighbors in Italy +would have been. There was no eager and smiling sympathy in the little +crowd that gathered to see what was going on; they were patient of +question and kind in their helpless response, but they were not gay. To a +man they had not heard of Heine; even the owner of a sausage and +blood-pudding shop across the way had not heard of him; the clerk of a +stationer-and-bookseller's next to the butcher's had heard of him, but he +had never heard that he lived in Konigstrasse; he never had heard where +he lived in Hamburg. + +The pilgrims to the fraudulent shrine got back into their carriage, and +drove sadly away, instructing their driver with the rigidity which their +limited German favored, not to let any house with a bust in its front +escape him. He promised, and took his course out through Konigstrasse, +and suddenly they found themselves in a world of such eld and quaintness +that they forgot Heine as completely as any of his countrymen had done. +They were in steep and narrow streets, that crooked and turned with no +apparent purpose of leading anywhere, among houses that looked down upon +them with an astonished stare from the leaden-sashed windows of their +timber-laced gables. The facades with their lattices stretching in bands +quite across them, and with their steep roofs climbing high in +successions of blinking dormers, were more richly mediaeval than anything +the travellers had ever dreamt of before, and they feasted themselves +upon the unimagined picturesqueness with a leisurely minuteness which +brought responsive gazers everywhere to the windows; windows were set +ajar; shop doors were darkened by curious figures from within, and the +traffic of the tortuous alleys was interrupted by their progress. They +could not have said which delighted them more--the houses in the +immediate foreground, or the sharp high gables in the perspectives and +the background; but all were like the painted scenes of the stage, and +they had a pleasant difficulty in realizing that they were not persons in +some romantic drama. + +The illusion remained with them and qualified the impression which +Hamburg made by her much-trolleyed Bostonian effect; by the decorous +activity and Parisian architecture of her business streets; by the +turmoil of her quays, and the innumerable masts and chimneys of her +shipping. At the heart of all was that quaintness, that picturesqueness +of the past, which embodied the spirit of the old Hanseatic city, and +seemed the expression of the home-side of her history. The sense of this +gained strength from such slight study of her annals as they afterwards +made, and assisted the digestion of some morsels of tough statistics. In +the shadow of those Gothic houses the fact that Hamburg was one of the +greatest coffee marts and money marts of the world had a romantic +glamour; and the fact that in the four years from 1870 till 1874 a +quarter of a million emigrants sailed on her ships for the United States +seemed to stretch a nerve of kindred feeling from those mediaeval streets +through the whole shabby length of Third Avenue. + +It was perhaps in this glamour, or this feeling of commercial solidarity, +that March went to have a look at the Hamburg Bourse, in the beautiful +new Rathhaus. It was not undergoing repairs, it was too new for that; but +it was in construction, and so it fulfilled the function of a public +edifice, in withholding its entire interest from the stranger. He could +not get into the Senate Chamber; but the Bourse was free to him, and when +he stepped within, it rose at him with a roar of voices and of feet like +the New York Stock Exchange. The spectacle was not so frantic; people +were not shaking their fists or fingers in each other's noses; but they +were all wild in the tamer German way, and he was glad to mount from the +Bourse to the poor little art gallery upstairs, and to shut out its +clamor. He was not so glad when he looked round on these, his first, +examples of modern German art. The custodian led him gently about and +said which things were for sale, and it made his heart ache to see how +bad they were, and to think that, bad as they were, he could not buy any +of them. + + + + +XXII. + +In the start from Cuxhaven the passengers had the irresponsible ease of +people ticketed through, and the steamship company had still the charge +of their baggage. But when the Marches left Hamburg for Leipsic (where +they had decided to break the long pull to Carlsbad), all the anxieties +of European travel, dimly remembered from former European days, offered +themselves for recognition. A porter vanished with their hand-baggage +before they could note any trait in him for identification; other porters +made away with their trunks; and the interpreter who helped March buy his +tickets, with a vocabulary of strictly railroad English, had to help him +find the pieces in the baggage-room, curiously estranged in a mountain of +alien boxes. One official weighed them; another obliged him to pay as +much in freight as for a third passenger, and gave him an illegible scrap +of paper which recorded their number and destination. The interpreter and +the porters took their fees with a professional effect of +dissatisfaction, and he went to wait with his wife amidst the smoking and +eating and drinking in the restaurant. They burst through with the rest +when the doors were opened to the train, and followed a glimpse of the +porter with their hand-bags, as he ran down the platform, still bent upon +escaping them, and brought him to bay at last in a car where he had got +very good seats for them, and sank into their places, hot and humiliated +by their needless tumult. + +As they cooled, they recovered their self-respect, and renewed a youthful +joy in some of the long-estranged facts. The road was rougher than the +roads at home; but for much less money they had the comfort, without the +unavailing splendor, of a Pullman in their second-class carriage. Mrs. +March had expected to be used with the severity on the imperial railroads +which she had failed to experience from the military on the Hamburg +sidewalks, but nothing could be kindlier than the whole management toward +her. Her fellow-travellers were not lavish of their rights, as Americans +are; what they got, that they kept; and in the run from Hamburg to +Leipsic she had several occasions to observe that no German, however +young or robust, dreams of offering a better place, if he has one, to a +lady in grace to her sex or age; if they got into a carriage too late to +secure a forward-looking seat, she rode backward to the end of that +stage. But if they appealed to their fellow-travellers for information +about changes, or stops, or any of the little facts that they wished to +make sure of, they were enlightened past possibility of error. At the +point where they might have gone wrong the explanations were renewed with +a thoughtfulness which showed that their anxieties had not been +forgotten. She said she could not see how any people could be both so +selfish and so sweet, and her husband seized the advantage of saying +something offensive: + +"You women are so pampered in America that you are astonished when you +are treated in Europe like the mere human beings you are." + +She answered with unexpected reasonableness: + +"Yes, there's something in that; but when the Germans have taught us how +despicable we are as women, why do they treat us so well as human +beings?" + +This was at ten o'clock, after she had ridden backward a long way, and at +last, within an hour of Leipsic, had got a seat confronting him. The +darkness had now hidden the landscape, but the impression of its few +simple elements lingered pleasantly in their sense: long levels, densely +wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests, and +checkered with fields of grain and grass, soaking under the thin rain +that from time to time varied the thin sunshine. + +The villages and peasants' cottages were notably few; but there was here +and there a classic or a gothic villa, which, at one point, an +English-speaking young lady turned from her Tauchnitz novel to explain as +the seat of some country gentleman; the land was in large holdings, and +this accounted for the sparsity of villages and cottages. + +She then said that she was a German teacher of English, in Hamburg, and +was going home to Potsdam for a visit. She seemed like a German girl out +of 'The Initials', and in return for this favor Mrs. March tried to +invest herself with some romantic interest as an American. She failed to +move the girl's fancy, even after she had bestowed on her an immense +bunch of roses which the young German friend in Hamburg had sent to them +just before they left their hotel. She failed, later, on the same ground +with the pleasant-looking English woman who got into their carriage at +Magdeburg, and talked over the 'London Illustrated News' with an +English-speaking Fraulein in her company; she readily accepted the fact +of Mrs. March's nationality, but found nothing wonderful in it, +apparently; and when she left the train she left Mrs. March to recall +with fond regret the old days in Italy when she first came abroad, and +could make a whole carriage full of Italians break into ohs and ahs by +saying that she was an American, and telling how far she had come across +the sea. + +"Yes," March assented, "but that was a great while ago, and Americans +were much rarer than they are now in Europe. The Italians are so much +more sympathetic than the Germans and English, and they saw that you +wanted to impress them. Heaven knows how little they cared! And then, you +were a very pretty young girl in those days; or at least I thought so." + +"Yes," she sighed, "and now I'm a plain old woman." + +"Oh, not quite so bad as that." + +"Yes, I am! Do you think they would have cared more if it had been Miss +Triscoe?" + +"Not so much as if it had been the pivotal girl. They would have found +her much more their ideal of the American woman; and even she would have +had to have been here thirty years ago." + +She laughed a little ruefully. "Well, at any rate, I should like to know +how Miss Triscoe would have affected them." + +"I should much rather know what sort of life that English woman is living +here with her German husband; I fancied she had married rank. I could +imagine how dull it must be in her little Saxon town, from the way she +clung to her Illustrated News, and explained the pictures of the +royalties to her friend. There is romance for you!" + +They arrived at Leipsic fresh and cheerful after their five hours' +journey, and as in a spell of their travelled youth they drove up through +the academic old town, asleep under its dimly clouded sky, and silent +except for the trolley-cars that prowled its streets with their feline +purr, and broke at times into a long, shrill caterwaul. A sense of the +past imparted itself to the well-known encounter with the portier and the +head waiter at the hotel door, to the payment of the driver, to the +endeavor of the secretary to have them take the most expensive rooms in +the house, and to his compromise upon the next most, where they found +themselves in great comfort, with electric lights and bells, and a quick +succession of fee-taking call-boys in dress-coats too large for them. The +spell was deepened by the fact, which March kept at the bottom of his +consciousness for the present, that one of their trunks was missing. This +linked him more closely to the travel of other days, and he spent the +next forenoon in a telegraphic search for the estray, with emotions +tinged by the melancholy of recollection, but in the security that since +it was somewhere in the keeping of the state railway, it would be finally +restored to him. + + + + +XXIII. + +Their windows, as they saw in the morning, looked into a large square of +aristocratic physiognomy, and of a Parisian effect in architecture, which +afterwards proved characteristic of the town, if not quite so +characteristic as to justify the passion of Leipsic for calling itself +Little Paris. The prevailing tone was of a gray tending to the pale +yellow of the Tauchnitz editions with which the place is more familiarly +associated in the minds of English-speaking travellers. It was rather +more sombre than it might have been if the weather had been fair; but a +quiet rain was falling dreamily that morning, and the square was provided +with a fountain which continued to dribble in the rare moments when the +rain forgot itself. The place was better shaded than need be in that +sunless land by the German elms that look like ours and it was +sufficiently stocked with German statues, that look like no others. It +had a monument, too, of the sort with which German art has everywhere +disfigured the kindly fatherland since the war with France. These +monuments, though they are so very ugly, have a sort of pathos as records +of the only war in which Germany unaided has triumphed against a foreign +foe, but they are as tiresome as all such memorial pomps must be. It is +not for the victories of a people that any other people can care. The +wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad wars, or +what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in death and +sorrow, and their fame is an offence to all men not concerned in them, +till time has softened it to a memory + + "Of old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago." + +It was for some such reason that while the Marches turned with instant +satiety from the swelling and strutting sculpture which celebrated the +Leipsic heroes of the war of 1870, they had heart for those of the war of +1813; and after their noonday dinner they drove willingly, in a pause of +the rain, out between yellowing harvests of wheat and oats to the field +where Napoleon was beaten by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians (it +always took at least three nations to beat the little wretch) fourscore +years before. Yet even there Mrs. March was really more concerned for the +sparsity of corn-flowers in the grain, which in their modern character of +Kaiserblumen she found strangely absent from their loyal function; and +March was more taken with the notion of the little gardens which his +guide told him the citizens could have in the suburbs of Leipsic and +enjoy at any trolley-car distance from their homes. He saw certain of +these gardens in groups, divided by low, unenvious fences, and sometimes +furnished with summer-houses, where the tenant could take his pleasure in +the evening air, with his family. The guide said he had such a garden +himself, at a rent of seven dollars a year, where he raised vegetables +and flowers, and spent his peaceful leisure; and March fancied that on +the simple domestic side of their life, which this fact gave him a +glimpse of, the Germans were much more engaging than in their character +of victors over either the First or the Third Napoleon. But probably they +would not have agreed with him, and probably nations will go on making +themselves cruel and tiresome till humanity at last prevails over +nationality. + +He could have put the case to the guide himself; but though the guide was +imaginably liberated to a cosmopolitan conception of things by three +years' service as waiter in English hotels, where he learned the +language, he might not have risen to this. He would have tried, for he +was a willing and kindly soul, though he was not a 'valet de place' by +profession. There seemed in fact but one of that useless and amusing race +(which is everywhere falling into decay through the rivalry of the +perfected Baedeker,) left in Leipsic, and this one was engaged, so that +the Marches had to devolve upon their ex-waiter, who was now the keeper +of a small restaurant. He gladly abandoned his business to the care of +his wife, in order to drive handsomely about in his best clothes, with +strangers who did not exact too much knowledge from him. In his zeal to +do something he possessed himself of March's overcoat when they +dismounted at their first gallery, and let fall from its pocket his +prophylactic flask of brandy, which broke with a loud crash on the marble +floor in the presence of several masterpieces, and perfumed the whole +place. The masterpieces were some excellent works of Luke Kranach, who +seemed the only German painter worth looking at when there were any Dutch +or Italian pictures near, but the travellers forgot the name and nature +of the Kranachs, and remembered afterwards only the shattered fragments +of the brandy-flask, just how they looked on the floor, and the fumes, +how they smelt, that rose from the ruin. + +It might have been a warning protest of the veracities against what they +were doing; but the madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel, was on +them, and they delivered themselves up to it as they used in their +ignorant youth, though now they knew its futility so well. They spared +themselves nothing that they had time for, that day, and they felt +falsely guilty for their omissions, as if they really had been duties to +art and history which must be discharged, like obligations to one's maker +and one's neighbor. + +They had a touch of genuine joy in the presence of the beautiful old +Rathhaus, and they were sensible of something like a genuine emotion in +passing the famous and venerable university; the very air of Leipsic is +redolent of printing and publication, which appealed to March in his +quality of editor, and they could not fail of an impression of the quiet +beauty of the town, with its regular streets of houses breaking into +suburban villas of an American sort, and intersected with many canals, +which in the intervals of the rain were eagerly navigated by pleasure +boats, and contributed to the general picturesqueness by their frequent +bridges, even during the drizzle. There seemed to be no churches to do, +and as it was a Sunday, the galleries were so early closed against them +that they were making a virtue as well as a pleasure of the famous scene +of Napoleon's first great defeat. + +By a concert between their guide and driver their carriage drew up at the +little inn by the road-side, which is also a museum stocked with relics +from the battle-field, and with objects of interest relating to it. Old +muskets, old swords, old shoes and old coats, trumpets, drums, +gun-carriages, wheels, helmets, cannon balls, grape-shot, and all the +murderous rubbish which battles come to at last, with proclamations, +autographs, caricatures and likenesses of Napoleon, and effigies of all +the other generals engaged, and miniatures and jewels of their womenkind, +filled room after room, through which their owner vaunted his way, with a +loud pounding voice and a bad breath. When he wished them to enjoy some +gross British satire or clumsy German gibe at Bonaparte's expense, and +put his face close to begin the laugh, he was something so terrible that +March left the place with a profound if not a reasoned regret that the +French had not won the battle of Leipsic. He walked away musing pensively +upon the traveller's inadequacy to the ethics of history when a breath +could so sway him against his convictions; but even after he had cleansed +his lungs with some deep respirations he found himself still a +Bonapartist in the presence of that stone on the rising ground where +Napoleon sat to watch the struggle on the vast plain, and see his empire +slipping through his blood-stained fingers. It was with difficulty that +he could keep from revering the hat and coat which are sculptured on the +stone, but it was well that he succeeded, for he could not make out then +or afterwards whether the habiliments represented were really Napoleon's +or not, and they might have turned out to be Barclay de Tolly's. + +While he stood trying to solve this question of clothes he was startled +by the apparition of a man climbing the little slope from the opposite +quarter, and advancing toward them. He wore the imperial crossed by the +pointed mustache once so familiar to a world much the worse for them, and +March had the shiver of a fine moment in which he fancied the Third +Napoleon rising to view the scene where the First had looked his coming +ruin in the face. + +"Why, it's Miss Triscoe!" cried his wife, and before March had noticed +the approach of another figure, the elder and the younger lady had rushed +upon each other, and encountered with a kiss. At the same time the visage +of the last Emperor resolved itself into the face of General Triscoe, who +gave March his hand in a more tempered greeting. + +The ladies began asking each other of their lives since their parting two +days before, and the men strolled a few paces away toward the distant +prospect of Leipsic, which at that point silhouettes itself in a noble +stretch of roofs and spires and towers against the horizon. + +General Triscoe seemed no better satisfied with Germany than he had been +on first stepping ashore at Cuxhaven. He might still have been in a pout +with his own country, but as yet he had not made up with any other; and +he said, "What a pity Napoleon didn't thrash the whole dunderheaded lot! +His empire would have been a blessing to them, and they would have had +some chance of being civilized under the French. All this unification of +nationalities is the great humbug of the century. Every stupid race +thinks it's happy because it's united, and civilization has been set back +a hundred years by the wars that were fought to bring the unions about; +and more wars will have to be fought to keep them up. What a farce it is! +What's become of the nationality of the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein, or +the French in the Rhine Provinces, or the Italians in Savoy?" + +March had thought something like this himself, but to have it put by +General Triscoe made it offensive. "I don't know. Isn't it rather +quarrelling with the course of human events to oppose accomplished facts? +The unifications were bound to be, just as the separations before them +were. And so far they have made for peace, in Europe at least, and peace +is civilization. Perhaps after a great many ages people will come +together through their real interests, the human interests; but at +present it seems as if nothing but a romantic sentiment of patriotism can +unite them. By-and-by they may find that there is nothing in it." + +"Perhaps," said the general, discontentedly. "I don't see much promise of +any kind in the future." + +"Well, I don't know. When you think of the solid militarism of Germany, +you seem remanded to the most hopeless moment of the Roman Empire; you +think nothing can break such a force; but my guide says that even in +Leipsic the Socialists outnumber all the other parties, and the army is +the great field of the Socialist propaganda. The army itself may be +shaped into the means of democracy--even of peace." + +"You're very optimistic," said Triscoe, curtly. "As I read the signs, we +are not far from universal war. In less than a year we shall make the +break ourselves in a war with Spain." He looked very fierce as he +prophesied, and he dotted March over with his staccato glances. + +"Well, I'll allow that if Tammany comes in this year, we shall have war +with Spain. You can't ask more than that, General Triscoe?" + +Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had not said a word of the 'battle of +Leipsic', or of the impersonal interests which it suggested to the men. +For all these, they might still have been sitting in their steamer chairs +on the promenade of the Norumbia at a period which seemed now of +geological remoteness. The girl accounted for not being in Dresden by her +father's having decided not to go through Berlin but to come by way of +Leipsic, which he thought they had better see; they had come without +stopping in Hamburg. They had not enjoyed Leipsic much; it had rained the +whole day before, and they had not gone out. She asked when Mrs. March +was going on to Carlsbad, and Mrs. March answered, the next morning; her +husband wished to begin his cure at once. + +Then Miss Triscoe pensively wondered if Carlsbad would do her father any +good; and Mrs. March discreetly inquired General Triscoe's symptoms. + +"Oh, he hasn't any. But I know he can't be well--with his gloomy +opinions." + +"They may come from his liver," said Mrs. March. "Nearly everything of +that kind does. I know that Mr. March has been terribly depressed at +times, and the doctor said it was nothing but his liver; and Carlsbad is +the great place for that, you know." + +"Perhaps I can get papa to run over some day, if he doesn't like Dresden. +It isn't very far, is it?" + +They referred to Mrs. March's Baedeker together, and found that it was +five hours. + +"Yes, that is what I thought," said Miss Triscoe, with a carelessness +which convinced Mrs. March she had looked up the fact already. + +"If you decide to come, you must let us get rooms for you at our hotel. +We're going to Pupp's; most of the English and Americans go to the hotels +on the Hill, but Pupp's is in the thick of it in the lower town; and it's +very gay, Mr. Kenby says; he's been there often. Mr. Burnamy is to get +our rooms." + +"I don't suppose I can get papa to go," said Miss Triscoe, so insincerely +that Mrs. March was sure she had talked over the different routes; to +Carlsbad with Burnamy--probably on the way from Cuxhaven. She looked up +from digging the point of her umbrella in the ground. "You didn't meet +him here this morning?" + +Mrs. March governed herself to a calm which she respected in asking, "Has +Mr. Burnamy been here?" + +"He came on with Mr. and Mrs. Eltwin, when we did, and they all decided +to stop over a day. They left on the twelve-o'clock train to-day." + +Mrs. March perceived that the girl had decided not to let the facts +betray themselves by chance, and she treated them as of no significance. + +"No, we didn't see him," she said, carelessly. + +The two men came walking slowly towards them, and Miss Triscoe said, +"We're going to Dresden this evening, but I hope we shall meet somewhere, +Mrs. March." + +"Oh, people never lose sight of each other in Europe; they can't; it's so +little!" + +"Agatha," said the girl's father, "Mr. March tells me that the museum +over there is worth seeing." + +"Well," the girl assented, and she took a winning leave of the Marches, +and moved gracefully away with her father. + +"I should have thought it was Agnes," said Mrs. March, following them +with her eyes before she turned upon her husband. "Did he tell you +Burnamy had been here? Well, he has! He has just gone on to Carlsbad. He +made, those poor old Eltwins stop over with him, so he could be with +her." + +"Did she say that?" + +"No, but of course he did." + +"Then it's all settled?" + +"No, it isn't settled. It's at the most interesting point." + +"Well, don't read ahead. You always want to look at the last page." + +"You were trying to look at the last page yourself," she retorted, and +she would have liked to punish him for his complex dishonesty toward the +affair; but upon the whole she kept her temper with him, and she made him +agree that Miss Triscoe's getting her father to Carlsbad was only a +question of time. + +They parted heart's-friends with their ineffectual guide, who was +affectionately grateful for the few marks they gave him, at the hotel +door; and they were in just the mood to hear men singing in a farther +room when they went down to supper. The waiter, much distracted from +their own service by his duties to it, told them it was the breakfast +party of students which they had heard beginning there about noon. The +revellers had now been some six hours at table, and he said they might +not rise before midnight; they had just got to the toasts, which were +apparently set to music. + +The students of right remained a vivid color in the impression of the +university town. They pervaded the place, and decorated it with their +fantastic personal taste in coats and trousers, as well as their corps +caps of green, white, red, and blue, but above all blue. They were not +easily distinguishable from the bicyclers who were holding one of the +dull festivals of their kind in Leipsic that day, and perhaps they were +sometimes both students and bicyclers. As bicyclers they kept about in +the rain, which they seemed not to mind; so far from being disheartened, +they had spirits enough to take one another by the waist at times and +waltz in the square before the hotel. At one moment of the holiday some +chiefs among them drove away in carriages; at supper a winner of prizes +sat covered with badges and medals; another who went by the hotel +streamed with ribbons; and an elderly man at his side was bespattered +with small knots and ends of them, as if he had been in an explosion of +ribbons somewhere. It seemed all to be as exciting for them, and it was +as tedious for the witnesses, as any gala of students and bicyclers at +home. + +Mrs. March remained with an unrequited curiosity concerning their +different colors and different caps, and she tried to make her husband +find out what they severally meant; he pretended a superior interest in +the nature of a people who had such a passion for uniforms that they were +not content with its gratification in their immense army, but indulged it +in every pleasure and employment of civil life. He estimated, perhaps not +very accurately, that only one man out of ten in Germany wore citizens' +dress; and of all functionaries he found that the dogs of the +women-and-dog teams alone had no distinctive dress; even the women had +their peasant costume. + +There was an industrial fair open at Leipsic which they went out of the +city to see after supper, along with a throng of Leipsickers, whom an +hour's interval of fine weather tempted forth on the trolley; and with +the help of a little corporal, who took a fee for his service with the +eagerness of a civilian, they got wheeled chairs, and renewed their +associations with the great Chicago Fair in seeing the exposition from +them. This was not, March said, quite the same as being drawn by a +woman-and-dog team, which would have been the right means of doing a +German fair; but it was something to have his chair pushed by a slender +young girl, whose stalwart brother applied his strength to the chair of +the lighter traveller; and it was fit that the girl should reckon the +common hire, while the man took the common tip. They made haste to leave +the useful aspects of the fair, and had themselves trundled away to the +Colonial Exhibit, where they vaguely expected something like the +agreeable corruptions of the Midway Plaisance. The idea of her colonial +progress with which Germany is trying to affect the home-keeping +imagination of her people was illustrated by an encampment of savages +from her Central-African possessions. They were getting their supper at +the moment the Marches saw them, and were crouching, half naked, around +the fires under the kettles, and shivering from the cold, but they were +not very characteristic of the imperial expansion, unless perhaps when an +old man in a red blanket suddenly sprang up with a knife in his hand and +began to chase a boy round the camp. The boy was lighter-footed, and +easily outran the sage, who tripped at times on his blanket. None of the +other Central Africans seemed to care for the race, and without waiting +for the event, the American spectators ordered themselves trundled away +to another idle feature of the fair, where they hoped to amuse themselves +with the image of Old Leipsic. + +This was so faithfully studied from the past in its narrow streets and +Gothic houses that it was almost as picturesque as the present epoch in +the old streets of Hamburg. A drama had just begun to be represented on a +platform of the public square in front of a fourteenth-century +beer-house, with people talking from the windows round, and revellers in +the costume of the period drinking beer and eating sausages at tables in +the open air. Their eating and drinking were genuine, and in the midst of +it a real rain began, to pour down upon them, without affecting them any +more than if they had been Germans of the nineteenth century. But it +drove the Americans to a shelter from which they could not see the play, +and when it held up, they made their way back to their hotel. + +Their car was full of returning pleasurers, some of whom were happy +beyond the sober wont of the fatherland. The conductor took a special +interest in his tipsy passengers, trying to keep them in order, and +genially entreating them to be quiet when they were too obstreperous. +From time to time he got some of them off, and then, when he remounted +the car, he appealed to the remaining passengers for their sympathy with +an innocent smile, which the Americans, still strange to the unjoyous +physiognomy of the German Empire, failed to value at its rare worth. + +Before he slept that night March tried to assemble from the experiences +and impressions of the day some facts which he would not be ashamed of as +a serious observer of life in Leipsic, and he remembered that their guide +had said house-rent was very low. He generalized from the guide's content +with his fee that the Germans were not very rapacious; and he became +quite irrelevantly aware that in Germany no man's clothes fitted him, or +seemed expected to fit him; that the women dressed somewhat better, and +were rather pretty sometimes, and that they had feet as large as the kind +hearts of the Germans of every age and sex. He was able to note, rather +more freshly, that with all their kindness the Germans were a very +nervous people, if not irritable, and at the least cause gave way to an +agitation, which indeed quickly passed, but was violent while it lasted. +Several times that day he had seen encounters between the portier and +guests at the hotel which promised violence, but which ended peacefully +as soon as some simple question of train-time was solved. The encounters +always left the portier purple and perspiring, as any agitation must with +a man so tight in his livery. He bemoaned himself after one of them as +the victim of an unhappy calling, in which he could take no exercise. "It +is a life of excitements, but not of movements," he explained to March; +and when he learned where he was going, he regretted that he could not go +to Carlsbad too. "For sugar?" he asked, as if there were overmuch of it +in his own make. + +March felt the tribute, but he had to say, "No; liver." + +"Ah!" said the portier, with the air of failing to get on common ground +with him. + + + + +XXV. + +The next morning was so fine that it would have been a fine morning in +America. Its beauty was scarcely sullied, even subjectively, by the +telegram which the portier sent after the Marches from the hotel, saying +that their missing trunk had not yet been found, and their spirits were +as light as the gay little clouds which blew about in the sky, when their +train drew out in the sunshine, brilliant on the charming landscape all +the way to Carlsbad. A fatherly 'traeger' had done his best to get them +the worst places in a non-smoking compartment, but had succeeded so +poorly that they were very comfortable, with no companions but a mother +and daughter, who spoke German in soft low tones together. Their +compartment was pervaded by tobacco fumes from the smokers, but as these +were twice as many as the non-smokers, it was only fair, and after March +had got a window open it did not matter, really. + +He asked leave of the strangers in his German, and they consented in +theirs; but he could not master the secret of the window-catch, and the +elder lady said in English, "Let me show you," and came to his help. + +The occasion for explaining that they were Americans and accustomed to +different car windows was so tempting that Mrs. March could not forbear, +and the other ladies were affected as deeply as she could wish. Perhaps +they were the more affected because it presently appeared that they had +cousins in New York whom she knew of, and that they were acquainted with +an American family that had passed the winter in Berlin. Life likes to do +these things handsomely, and it easily turned out that this was a family +of intimate friendship with the Marches; the names, familiarly spoken, +abolished all strangeness between the travellers; and they entered into a +comparison of tastes, opinions, and experiences, from which it seemed +that the objects and interests of cultivated people in Berlin were quite +the same as those of cultivated people in New York. Each of the parties +to the discovery disclaimed any superiority for their respective +civilizations; they wished rather to ascribe a greater charm and virtue +to the alien conditions; and they acquired such merit with one another +that when the German ladies got out of the train at Franzensbad, the +mother offered Mrs. March an ingenious folding footstool which she had +admired. In fact, she left her with it clasped to her breast, and bowing +speechless toward the giver in a vain wish to express her gratitude. + +"That was very pretty of her, my dear," said March. "You couldn't have +done that." + +"No," she confessed; "I shouldn't have had the courage. The courage of my +emotions," she added, thoughtfully. + +"Ah, that's the difference! A Berliner could do it, and a Bostonian +couldn't. Do you think it so much better to have the courage of your +convictions?" + +"I don't know. It seems to me that I'm less and less certain of +everything that I used to be sure of." + +He laughed, and then he said, "I was thinking how, on our wedding +journey, long ago, that Gray Sister at the Hotel Dieu in Quebec offered +you a rose." + +"Well?" + +"That was to your pretty youth. Now the gracious stranger gives you a +folding stool." + +"To rest my poor old feet. Well, I would rather have it than a rose, +now." + +"You bent toward her at just the slant you had when you took the flower +that time; I noticed it. I didn't see that you looked so very different. +To be sure the roses in your cheeks have turned into rosettes; but +rosettes are very nice, and they're much more permanent; I prefer them; +they will keep in any climate." + +She suffered his mockery with an appreciative sigh. "Yes, our age +caricatures our youth, doesn't it?" + +"I don't think it gets much fun out of it," he assented. + +"No; but it can't help it. I used to rebel against it when it first +began. I did enjoy being young." + +"You did, my dear," he said, taking her hand tenderly; she withdrew it, +because though she could bear his sympathy, her New England nature could +not bear its expression. "And so did I; and we were both young a long +time. Travelling brings the past back, don't you think? There at that +restaurant, where we stopped for dinner--" + +"Yes, it was charming! Just as it used to be! With that white cloth, and +those tall shining bottles of wine, and the fruit in the centre, and the +dinner in courses, and that young waiter who spoke English, and was so +nice! I'm never going home; you may, if you like." + +"You bragged to those ladies about our dining-cars; and you said that our +railroad restaurants were quite as good as the European." + +"I had to do that. But I knew better; they don't begin to be." + +"Perhaps not; but I've been thinking that travel is a good deal alike +everywhere. It's the expression of the common civilization of the world. +When I came out of that restaurant and ran the train down, and then found +that it didn't start for fifteen minutes, I wasn't sure whether I was at +home or abroad. And when we changed cars at Eger, and got into this train +which had been baking in the sun for us outside the station, I didn't +know but I was back in the good old Fitchburg depot. To be sure, +Wallenstein wasn't assassinated at Boston, but I forgot his murder at +Eger, and so that came to the same thing. It's these confounded fifty-odd +years. I used to recollect everything." + +He had got up and was looking out of the window at the landscape, which +had not grown less amiable in growing rather more slovenly since they had +crossed the Saxon bolder into Bohemia. All the morning and early +afternoon they had run through lovely levels of harvest, where men were +cradling the wheat and women were binding it into sheaves in the narrow +fields between black spaces of forest. After they left Eger, there was +something more picturesque and less thrifty in the farming among the low +hills which they gradually mounted to uplands, where they tasted a +mountain quality in the thin pure air. The railroad stations were +shabbier; there was an indefinable touch of something Southern in the +scenery and the people. Lilies were rocking on the sluggish reaches of +the streams, and where the current quickened, tall wheels were lifting +water for the fields in circles of brimming and spilling pockets. Along +the embankments, where a new track was being laid, barefooted women were +at work with pick and spade and barrow, and little yellow-haired girls +were lugging large white-headed babies, and watching the train go by. At +an up grade where it slowed in the ascent he began to throw out to the +children the pfennigs which had been left over from the passage in +Germany, and he pleased himself with his bounty, till the question +whether the children could spend the money forced itself upon him. He sat +down feeling less like a good genius than a cruel magician who had +tricked them with false wealth; but he kept his remorse to himself, and +tried to interest his wife in the difference of social and civic ideal +expressed in the change of the inhibitory notices at the car windows, +which in Germany had strongliest forbidden him to outlean himself, and +now in Austria entreated him not to outbow himself. She refused to share +in the speculation, or to debate the yet nicer problem involved by the +placarded prayer in the washroom to the Messrs. Travellers not to take +away the soap; and suddenly he felt himself as tired as she looked, with +that sense of the futility of travel which lies in wait for every one who +profits by travel. + + + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Bad wars, or what are comically called good wars + Calm of those who have logic on their side + Decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance + Explained perhaps too fully + Futility of travel + Humanity may at last prevail over nationality + Impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much + Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of + Life of the ship, like the life of the sea: a sodden monotony + Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous + Madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel + Night so bad that it was worse than no night at all + Our age caricatures our youth + Prices fixed by his remorse + Recipes for dishes and diseases + Reckless and culpable optimism + Repeated the nothings they had said already + She cares for him: that she was so cold shows that + She could bear his sympathy, but not its expression + Suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism + They were so near in age, though they were ten years apart + Unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine + Wilful sufferers + Woman harnessed with a dog to a cart + Wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests + Work he was so fond of and so weary of + + + + +THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY + + + +PART II. + + +XXVI. + +They found Burnamy expecting them at the station in Carlsbad, and she +scolded him like a mother for taking the trouble to meet them, while she +kept back for the present any sign of knowing that he had staid over a +day with the Triscoes in Leipsic. He was as affectionately glad to see +her and her husband as she could have wished, but she would have liked it +better if he had owned up at once about Leipsic. He did not, and it +seemed to her that he was holding her at arm's-length in his answers +about his employer. He would not say how he liked his work, or how he +liked Mr. Stoller; he merely said that they were at Pupp's together, and +that he had got in a good day's work already; and since he would say no +more, she contented herself with that. + +The long drive from the station to the hotel was by streets that wound +down the hill-side like those of an Italian mountain town, between gay +stuccoed houses, of Southern rather than of Northern architecture; and +the impression of a Latin country was heightened at a turn of the road +which brought into view a colossal crucifix planted against a curtain of +dark green foliage on the brow of one of the wooded heights that +surrounded Carlsbad. When they reached the level of the Tepl, the +hill-fed torrent that brawls through the little city under pretty bridges +within walls of solid masonry, they found themselves in almost the only +vehicle on a brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan world. +Germans in every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black gabardines, +with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their black velvet +derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests in flowing +robes and brimless high hats; Russians in caftans and Cossacks in +Astrakhan caps, accented the more homogeneous masses of western +Europeans, in which it would have been hard to say which were English, +French or Italians. Among the vividly dressed ladies, some were +imaginably Parisian from their chic costumes, but they might easily have +been Hungarians or Levantines of taste; some Americans, who might have +passed unknown in the perfection of their dress, gave their nationality +away in the flat wooden tones of their voices, which made themselves +heard above the low hum of talk and the whisper of the innumerable feet. + +The omnibus worked its way at a slow walk among the promenaders going and +coming between the rows of pollard locusts on one side and the bright +walls of the houses on the other. Under the trees were tables, served by +pretty bareheaded girls who ran to and from the restaurants across the +way. On both sides flashed and glittered the little shops full of silver, +glass, jewelry, terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and all the idle +frippery of watering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, and they +suggested Saratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no place else +in the world, as the crowd which might have been that of other cities at +certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its habitual effect. + +"Do you like it?" asked Burnamy, as if he owned the place, and Mrs. March +saw how simple-hearted he was in his reticence, after all. She was ready +to bless him when they reached the hotel and found that his interest had +got them the only rooms left in the house. This satisfied in her the +passion for size which is at the bottom of every American heart, and +which perhaps above all else marks us the youngest of the peoples. We +pride ourselves on the bigness of our own things, but we are not +ungenerous, and when we go to Europe and find things bigger than ours, we +are magnanimously happy in them. Pupp's, in its altogether different way, +was larger than any hotel at Saratoga or at Niagara; and when Burnamy +told her that it sometimes fed fifteen thousand people a day in the +height of the season, she was personally proud of it. + +She waited with him in the rotunda of the hotel, while the secretary led +March off to look at the rooms reserved for them, and Burnamy hospitably +turned the revolving octagonal case in the centre of the rotunda where +the names of the guests were put up. They were of all nations, but there +were so many New Yorkers whose names ended in berg, and thal, and stern, +and baum that she seemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on +Broadway. A large man of unmistakable American make, but with so little +that was of New England or New York in his presence that she might not at +once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quill +toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He had a jealous blue eye, into +which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straight mouth +stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawny chin-beard, and he +wore his soft hat so far back from his high forehead (it showed to the +crown when he took his hat off) that he had the effect of being +uncovered. + +At his approach Burnamy turned, and with a flush said: "Oh! Let me +introduce Mr. Stoller, Mrs. March." + +Stoller took his toothpick out of his mouth and bowed; then he seemed to +remember, and took off his hat. "You see Jews enough, here to make you +feel at home?" he asked; and he added: "Well, we got some of 'em in +Chicago, too, I guess. This young man"--he twisted his head toward +Burnamy--"found you easy enough?" + +"It was very good of him to meet us," Mrs. March began. "We didn't +expect--" + +"Oh, that's all right," said Stoller, putting his toothpick back, and his +hat on. "We'd got through for the day; my doctor won't let me work all I +want to, here. Your husband's going to take the cure, they tell me. Well, +he wants to go to a good doctor, first. You can't go and drink these +waters hit or miss. I found that out before I came." + +"Oh, no!" said Mrs. March, and she wished to explain how they had been +advised; but he said to Burnamy: + +"I sha'n't want you again till ten to-morrow morning. Don't let me +interrupt you," he added patronizingly to Mrs. March. He put his hand up +toward his hat, and sauntered away out of the door. + +Burnamy did not speak; and she only asked at last, to relieve the +silence, "Is Mr. Stoller an American?" + +"Why, I suppose so," he answered, with an uneasy laugh. "His people were +German emigrants who settled in Southern Indiana. That makes him as much +American as any of us, doesn't it?" + +Burnamy spoke with his mind on his French-Canadian grandfather, who had +come down through Detroit, when their name was Bonami; but Mrs. March +answered from her eight generations of New England ancestry. "Oh, for the +West, yes, perhaps," and they neither of them said anything more about +Stoller. + +In their room, where she found March waiting for her amidst their +arriving baggage, she was so full of her pent-up opinions of Burnamy's +patron that she, would scarcely speak of the view from their windows of +the wooded hills up and down the Tepl. "Yes, yes; very nice, and I know I +shall enjoy it ever so much. But I don't know what you will think of that +poor young Burnamy!" + +"Why, what's happened to him?" + +"Happened? Stoller's happened." + +"Oh, have you seen him, already? Well?" + +"Well, if you had been going to pick out that type of man, you'd have +rejected him, because you'd have said he was too pat. He's like an actor +made up for a Western millionaire. Do you remember that American in +'L'Etranger' which Bernhardt did in Boston when she first came? He, looks +exactly like that, and he has the worst manners. He stood talking to me +with his hat on, and a toothpick in his mouth; and he made me feel as if +he had bought me, along with Burnamy, and had paid too much. If you don't +give him a setting down, Basil, I shall never speak to you; that's all. +I'm sure Burnamy is in some trouble with him; he's got some sort of hold +upon him; what it could be in such a short time, I can't imagine; but if +ever a man seemed to be, in a man's power, he does, in his! + +"Now," said March, "your pronouns have got so far beyond me that I think +we'd better let it all go till after supper; perhaps I shall see Stoller +myself by that time." + +She had been deeply stirred by her encounter with Stoller, but she +entered with impartial intensity into the fact that the elevator at +Pupp's had the characteristic of always coming up and never going down +with passengers. It was locked into its closet with a solid door, and +there was no bell to summon it, or any place to take it except on the +ground-floor; but the stairs by which she could descend were abundant and +stately; and on one landing there was the lithograph of one of the +largest and ugliest hotels in New York; how ugly it was, she said she +should never have known if she had not seen it there. + +The dining-room was divided into the grand saloon, where they supped amid +rococo sculptures and frescoes, and the glazed veranda opening by vast +windows on a spread of tables without, which were already filling up for +the evening concert. Around them at the different tables there were +groups of faces and figures fascinating in their strangeness, with that +distinction which abashes our American level in the presence of European +inequality. + +"How simple and unimpressive we are, Basil," she said, "beside all these +people! I used to feel it in Europe when I was young, and now I'm certain +that we must seem like two faded-in old village photographs. We don't +even look intellectual! I hope we look good." + +"I know I do," said March. The waiter went for their supper, and they +joined in guessing the different nationalities in the room. A French +party was easy enough; a Spanish mother and daughter were not difficult, +though whether they were not South-American remained uncertain; two +elderly maiden ladies were unmistakably of central Massachusetts, and +were obviously of a book-club culture that had left no leaf unturned; +some Triestines gave themselves away by their Venetian accent; but a +large group at a farther table were unassignable in the strange language +which they clattered loudly together, with bursts of laughter. They were +a family party of old and young, they were having a good time, with a +freedom which she called baronial; the ladies wore white satin, or black +lace, but the men were in sack-coats; she chose to attribute them, for no +reason but their outlandishness, to Transylvania. March pretended to +prefer a table full of Germans, who were unmistakably bourgeois, and yet +of intellectual effect. He chose as his favorite a middle-aged man of +learned aspect, and they both decided to think of him as the Herr +Professor, but they did not imagine how perfectly the title fitted him +till he drew a long comb from his waistcoat pocket and combed his hair +and beard with it above the table. + +The wine wrought with the Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together +at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them. One old gentleman +had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums when +he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless except +for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between. Suddenly he +choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up before +him, and-- + +"Noblesse oblige," said March, with the tone of irony which he reserved +for his wife's preoccupations with aristocracies of all sorts. "I think I +prefer my Hair Professor, bourgeois, as he is." + +The ladies attributively of central Massachusetts had risen from their +table, and were making for the door without having paid for their supper. +The head waiter ran after them; with a real delicacy for their mistake he +explained that though in most places the meals were charged in the bill, +it was the custom in Carlsbad to pay for them at the table; one could see +that he was making their error a pleasant adventure to them which they +could laugh over together, and write home about without a pang. + +"And I," said Mrs. March, shamelessly abandoning the party of the +aristocracy, "prefer the manners of the lower classes." + +"Oh, yes," he admitted. "The only manners we have at home are black ones. +But you mustn't lose courage. Perhaps the nobility are not always so +baronial." + +"I don't know whether we have manners at home," she said, "and I don't +believe I care. At least we have decencies." + +"Don't be a jingo," said her husband. + + + + +XXVII. + +Though Stoller had formally discharged Burnamy from duty for the day, he +was not so full of resources in himself, and he had not so general an +acquaintance in the hotel but he was glad to have the young fellow make +up to him in the reading-room, that night. He laid down a New York paper +ten days old in despair of having left any American news in it, and +pushed several continental Anglo-American papers aside with his elbow, as +he gave a contemptuous glance at the foreign journals, in Bohemian, +Hungarian, German, French, and Italian, which littered the large table. + +"I wonder," he said, "how long it'll take'em, over here, to catch on to +our way of having pictures?" + +Burnamy had come to his newspaper work since illustrated journalism was +established, and he had never had any shock from it at home, but so +sensitive is youth to environment that, after four days in Europe, the +New York paper Stoller had laid down was already hideous to him. From the +politic side of his nature, however, he temporized with Stoller's +preference. "I suppose it will be some time yet." + +"I wish," said Stoller, with a savage disregard of expressed sequences +and relevancies, "I could ha' got some pictures to send home with that +letter this afternoon: something to show how they do things here, and be +a kind of object-lesson." This term had come up in a recent campaign when +some employers, by shutting down their works, were showing their +employees what would happen if the employees voted their political +opinions into effect, and Stoller had then mastered its meaning and was +fond of using it. "I'd like 'em to see the woods around here, that the +city owns, and the springs, and the donkey-carts, and the theatre, and +everything, and give 'em some practical ideas." + +Burnamy made an uneasy movement. + +"I'd 'a' liked to put 'em alongside of some of our improvements, and show +how a town can be carried on when it's managed on business principles." + +"Why didn't you think of it?" + +"Really, I don't know," said Burnamy, with a touch of impatience. + +They had not met the evening before on the best of terms. Stoller had +expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his displeasure +with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have spent at +Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for the +delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that by +working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had got +Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in time for +the first steamer the letter which was to appear over the proprietor's +name in his paper. It was a sort of rough but very full study of the +Carlsbad city government, the methods of taxation, the municipal +ownership of the springs and the lands, and the public control in +everything. It condemned the aristocratic constitution of the +municipality, but it charged heavily in favor of the purity, beneficence, +and wisdom of the administration, under which there was no poverty and no +idleness, and which was managed like any large business. + +Stoller had sulkily recurred to his displeasure, once or twice, and +Burnamy suffered it submissively until now. But now, at the change in +Burnamy's tone, he changed his manner a little. + +"Seen your friends since supper?" he asked. + +"Only a moment. They are rather tired, and they've gone to bed." + +That the fellow that edits that book you write for?" + +"Yes; he owns it, too." + +The notion of any sort of ownership moved Stoller's respect, and he asked +more deferentially, "Makin' a good thing out of it?" + +"A living, I suppose. Some of the high-class weeklies feel the +competition of the ten-cent monthlies. But 'Every Other Week' is about +the best thing we've got in the literary way, and I guess it's holding +its own." + +"Have to, to let the editor come to Carlsbad," Stoller said, with a +return to the sourness of his earlier mood. "I don't know as I care much +for his looks; I seen him when he came in with you. No snap to him." He +clicked shut the penknife he had been paring his nails with, and started +up with the abruptness which marked all his motions, mental and physical; +as he walked heavily out of the room he said, without looking at Burnamy, +"You want to be ready by half past ten at the latest." + +Stoller's father and mother were poor emigrants who made their way to the +West with the instinct for sordid prosperity native to their race and +class; and they set up a small butcher shop in the little Indiana town +where their son was born, and throve in it from the start. He could +remember his mother helping his father make the sausage and head-cheese +and pickle the pigs' feet, which they took turns in selling at as great a +price as they could extort from the townspeople. She was a good and +tender mother, and when her little Yawcup, as the boys called Jacob in +mimicry after her, had grown to the school-going age, she taught him to +fight the Americans, who stoned him when he came out of his gate, and +mobbed his home-coming; and mocked and tormented him at play-time till +they wore themselves into a kindlier mind toward him through the +exhaustion of their invention. No one, so far as the gloomy, stocky, +rather dense little boy could make out, ever interfered in his behalf; +and he grew up in bitter shame for his German origin, which entailed upon +him the hard fate of being Dutch among the Americans. He hated his native +speech so much that he cried when he was forced to use it with his father +and mother at home; he furiously denied it with the boys who proposed to +parley with him in it on such terms as "Nix come arouce in de Dytchman's +house." He disused it so thoroughly that after his father took him out of +school, when he was old enough to help in the shop, he could not get back +to it. He regarded his father's business as part of his national +disgrace, and at the cost of leaving his home he broke away from it, and +informally apprenticed himself to the village blacksmith and wagon-maker. +When it came to his setting up for himself in the business he had chosen, +he had no help from his father, who had gone on adding dollar to dollar +till he was one of the richest men in the place. + +Jacob prospered too; his old playmates, who had used him so cruelly, had +many of them come to like him; but as a Dutchman they never dreamt of +asking him to their houses when they were young people, any more than +when they were children. He was long deeply in love with an American girl +whom he had never spoken to, and the dream of his life was to marry an +American. He ended by marrying the daughter of Pferd the brewer, who had +been at an American school in Indianapolis, and had come home as +fragilely and nasally American as anybody. She made him a good, sickly, +fretful wife; and bore him five children, of whom two survived, with no +visible taint of their German origin. + +In the mean time Jacob's father had died and left his money to his son, +with the understanding that he was to provide for his mother, who would +gladly have given every cent to him and been no burden to him, if she +could. He took her home, and cared tenderly for her as long as she lived; +and she meekly did her best to abolish herself in a household trying so +hard to be American. She could not help her native accent, but she kept +silence when her son's wife had company; and when her eldest +granddaughter began very early to have American callers, she went out of +the room; they would not have noticed her if she had staid. + +Before this Jacob had come forward publicly in proportion to his +financial importance in the community. He first commended himself to the +Better Element by crushing out a strike in his Buggy Works, which were +now the largest business interest of the place; and he rose on a wave of +municipal reform to such a height of favor with the respectable classes +that he was elected on a citizens' ticket to the Legislature. In the +reaction which followed he was barely defeated for Congress, and was +talked of as a dark horse who might be put up for the governorship some +day; but those who knew him best predicted that he would not get far in +politics, where his bull-headed business ways would bring him to ruin +sooner or later; they said, "You can't swing a bolt like you can a +strike." + +When his mother died, he surprised his old neighbors by going to live in +Chicago, though he kept his works in the place where he and they had +grown up together. His wife died shortly after, and within four years he +lost his three eldest children; his son, it was said, had begun to go +wrong first. But the rumor of his increasing wealth drifted back from +Chicago; he was heard of in different enterprises and speculations; at +last it was said that he had bought a newspaper, and then his boyhood +friends decided that Jake was going into politics again. + +In the wider horizons and opener atmosphere of the great city he came to +understand better that to be an American in all respects was not the +best. His mounting sense of importance began to be retroactive in the +direction of his ancestral home; he wrote back to the little town near +Wurzburg which his people had come from, and found that he had relatives +still living there, some of whom had become people of substance; and +about the time his health gave way from life-long gluttony, and he was +ordered to Carlsbad, he had pretty much made up his mind to take his +younger daughters and put them in school for a year or two in Wurzburg, +for a little discipline if not education. He had now left them there, to +learn the language, which he had forgotten with such heart-burning and +shame, and music, for which they had some taste. + +The twins loudly lamented their fate, and they parted from their father +with open threats of running away; and in his heart he did not altogether +blame them. He came away from Wurzburg raging at the disrespect for his +money and his standing in business which had brought him a more galling +humiliation there than anything he had suffered in his boyhood at Des +Vaches. It intensified him in his dear-bought Americanism to the point of +wishing to commit lese majesty in the teeth of some local dignitaries who +had snubbed him, and who seemed to enjoy putting our eagle to shame in +his person; there was something like the bird of his step-country in +Stoller's pale eyes and huge beak. + + + + +XXVIII. + +March sat with a company of other patients in the anteroom of the doctor, +and when it came his turn to be prodded and kneaded, he was ashamed at +being told he was not so bad a case as he had dreaded. The doctor wrote +out a careful dietary for him, with a prescription of a certain number of +glasses of water at a certain spring and a certain number of baths, and a +rule for the walks he was to take before and after eating; then the +doctor patted him on the shoulder and pushed him caressingly out of his +inner office. It was too late to begin his treatment that day, but he +went with his wife to buy a cup, with a strap for hanging it over his +shoulder, and he put it on so as to be an invalid with the others at +once; he came near forgetting the small napkin of Turkish towelling which +they stuffed into their cups, but happily the shopman called him back in +time to sell it to him. + +At five the next morning he rose, and on his way to the street exchanged +with the servants cleaning the hotel stairs the first of the gloomy +'Guten Morgens' which usher in the day at Carlsbad. They cannot be so +finally hopeless as they sound; they are probably expressive only of the +popular despair of getting through with them before night; but March +heard the salutations sorrowfully groaned out on every hand as he joined +the straggling current of invalids which swelled on the way past the +silent shops and cafes in the Alte Wiese, till it filled the street, and +poured its thousands upon the promenade before the classic colonnade of +the Muhlbrunn. On the other bank of the Tepl the Sprudel flings its +steaming waters by irregular impulses into the air under a pavilion of +iron and glass; but the Muhlbrunn is the source of most resort. There is +an instrumental concert somewhere in Carlsbad from early rising till +bedtime; and now at the Muhlbrunn there was an orchestra already playing; +and under the pillared porch, as well as before it, the multitude +shuffled up and down, draining their cups by slow sips, and then taking +each his place in the interminable line moving on to replenish them at +the spring. + +A picturesque majority of Polish Jews, whom some vice of their climate is +said peculiarly to fit for the healing effects of Carlsbad, most took his +eye in their long gabardines of rusty black and their derby hats of plush +or velvet, with their corkscrew curls coming down before their ears. They +were old and young, they were grizzled and red and black, but they seemed +all well-to-do; and what impresses one first and last at Carlsbad is that +its waters are mainly for the healing of the rich. After the Polish Jews, +the Greek priests of Russian race were the most striking figures. There +were types of Latin ecclesiastics, who were striking in their way too; +and the uniforms of certain Austrian officers and soldiers brightened the +picture. Here and there a southern face, Italian or Spanish or Levantine, +looked passionately out of the mass of dull German visages; for at +Carlsbad the Germans, more than any other gentile nation, are to the +fore. Their misfits, their absence of style, imparted the prevalent +effect; though now and then among the women a Hungarian, or Pole, or +Parisian, or American, relieved the eye which seeks beauty and grace +rather than the domestic virtues. There were certain faces, types of +discomfort and disease, which appealed from the beginning to the end. A +young Austrian, yellow as gold, and a livid South-American, were of a +lasting fascination to March. + +What most troubled him, in his scrutiny of the crowd, was the difficulty +of assigning people to their respective nations, and he accused his years +of having dulled his perceptions; but perhaps it was from their long +disuse in his homogeneous American world. The Americans themselves fused +with the European races who were often so hard to make out; his +fellow-citizens would not be identified till their bad voices gave them +away; he thought the women's voices the worst. + +At the springs, a line of young girls with a steady mechanical action +dipped the cups into the steaming source, and passed them impersonally up +to their owners. With the patients at the Muhlbrunn it was often a +half-hour before one's turn came, and at all a strict etiquette forbade +any attempt to anticipate it. The water was merely warm and flat, and +after the first repulsion one could forget it. March formed a childish +habit of counting ten between the sips, and of finishing the cup with a +gulp which ended it quickly; he varied his walks between cups by going +sometimes to a bridge at the end of the colonnade where a group of +Triestines were talking Venetian, and sometimes to the little Park beyond +the Kurhaus, where some old women were sweeping up from the close sward +the yellow leaves which the trees had untidily dropped overnight. He +liked to sit there and look at the city beyond the Tepl, where it climbed +the wooded heights in terraces till it lost its houses in the skirts and +folds of the forest. Most mornings it rained, quietly, absent-mindedly, +and this, with the chili in the air, deepened a pleasant illusion of +Quebec offered by the upper town across the stream; but there were sunny +mornings when the mountains shone softly through a lustrous mist, and the +air was almost warm. + +Once in his walk he found himself the companion of Burnamy's employer, +whom he had sometimes noted in the line at the Muhlbrunn, waiting his +turn, cup in hand, with a face of sullen impatience. Stoller explained +that though you could have the water brought to you at your hotel, he +chose to go to the spring for the sake of the air; it was something you +had got to live through; before he had that young Burnamy to help him he +did not know what to do with his time, but now, every minute he was not +eating or sleeping he was working; his cure did not oblige him to walk +much. He examined March, with a certain mixture of respect and contempt, +upon the nature of the literary life, and how it differed from the life +of a journalist. He asked if he thought Burnamy would amount to anything +as a literary man; he so far assented to March's faith in him as to say, +"He's smart." He told of leaving his daughters in school at Wurzburg; and +upon the whole he moved March with a sense of his pathetic loneliness +without moving his liking, as he passed lumberingly on, dangling his cup. + +March gave his own cup to the little maid at his spring, and while she +gave it to a second, who dipped it and handed it to a third for its +return to him, he heard an unmistakable fellow-countryman saying good-, +morning to them all in English. "Are you going to teach them United +States?" he asked of a face with which he knew such an appeal would not +fail. + +"Well," the man admitted, "I try to teach them that much. They like it. +You are an American? I am glad of it. I have 'most lost the use of my +lungs, here. I'm a great talker, and I talk to my wife till she's about +dead; then I'm out of it for the rest of the day; I can't speak German." + +His manner was the free, friendly manner of the West. He must be that +sort of untravelled American whom March had so seldom met, but he was +afraid to ask him if this was his first time at Carlsbad, lest it should +prove the third or fourth. "Are you taking the cure?" he asked instead. + +"Oh, no. My wife is. She'll be along directly; I come down here and drink +the waters to encourage her; doctor said to. That gets me in for the +diet, too. I've e't more cooked fruit since I been here than I ever did +in my life before. Prunes? My Lord, I'm full o' prunes! Well, it does me +good to see an American, to know him. I couldn't 'a' told you, it you +hadn't have spoken." + +"Well," said March, "I shouldn't have been so sure of you, either, by +your looks." + +"Yes, we can't always tell ourselves from these Dutch. But they know us, +and they don't want us, except just for one thing, and that's our money. +I tell you, the Americans are the chumps over here. Soon's they got all +our money, or think they have, they say, 'Here, you Americans, this is my +country; you get off;' and we got to get. Ever been over before?" + +"A great while ago; so long that I can hardly believe it." + +"It's my first time. My name's Otterson: I'm from out in Iowa." + +March gave him his name, and added that he was from New York. + +"Yes. I thought you was Eastern. But that wasn't an Eastern man you was +just with?" + +"No; he's from Chicago. He's a Mr. Stoller." + +"Not the buggy man?" + +"I believe he makes buggies." + +"Well, you do meet everybody here." The Iowan was silent for a moment, as +if, hushed by the weighty thought. "I wish my wife could have seen him. I +just want her to see the man that made our buggy. I don't know what's +keeping her, this morning," he added, apologetically. "Look at that +fellow, will you, tryin' to get away from those women!" A young officer +was doing his best to take leave of two ladies, who seemed to be mother +and daughter; they detained him by their united arts, and clung to him +with caressing words and looks. He was red in the face with his polite +struggles when he broke from them at last. "How they do hang on to a man, +over here!" the Iowa man continued. "And the Americans are as bad as any. +Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place, and our girls +just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well, it's so, Jenny," he +said to the lady who had joined them and whom March turned round to see +when he spoke to her. "If I wanted a foreigner I should go in for a man. +And these officers! Put their mustaches up at night in curl-papers, they +tell me. Introduce you to Mrs. Otterson, Mr. March. Well, had your first +glass, yet, Jenny? I'm just going for my second tumbler." + +He took his wife back to the spring, and began to tell her about Stoller; +she made no sign of caring for him; and March felt inculpated. She +relented a little toward him as they drank together; when he said he must +be going to breakfast with his wife, she asked where he breakfasted, and +said, "Why, we go to the Posthof, too." He answered that then they should +be sure some time to meet there; he did not venture further; he reflected +that Mrs. March had her reluctances too; she distrusted people who had +amused or interested him before she met them. + + + + +XXIX. + +Burnamy had found the Posthof for them, as he had found most of the other +agreeable things in Carlsbad, which he brought to their knowledge one by +one, with such forethought that March said he hoped he should be cared +for in his declining years as an editor rather than as a father; there +was no tenderness like a young contributor's. + +Many people from the hotels on the hill found at Pupp's just the time and +space between their last cup of water and their first cup of coffee which +are prescribed at Carlsbad; but the Marches were aware somehow from the +beginning that Pupp's had not the hold upon the world at breakfast which +it had at the mid-day dinner, or at supper on the evenings when the +concert was there. Still it was amusing, and they were patient of +Burnamy's delay till he could get a morning off from Stoller and go with +them to the Posthof. He met Mrs. March in the reading-room, where March +was to join them on his way from the springs with his bag of bread. The +earlier usage of buying the delicate pink slices of Westphalia ham, which +form the chief motive of a Carlsbad breakfast, at a certain shop in the +town, and carrying them to the cafe with you, is no longer of such +binding force as the custom of getting your bread at the Swiss bakery. +You choose it yourself at the counter, which begins to be crowded by half +past seven, and when you have collected the prescribed loaves into the +basket of metallic filigree given you by one of the baker's maids, she +puts it into a tissue-paper bag of a gay red color, and you join the +other invalids streaming away from the bakery, their paper bags making a +festive rustling as they go. + +Two roads lead out of the town into the lovely meadow-lands, a good mile +up the brawling Tepl, before they join on the right side of the torrent, +where the Posthof lurks nestled under trees whose boughs let the sun and +rain impartially through upon its army of little tables. By this time the +slow omnibus plying between Carlsbad and some villages in the valley +beyond has crossed from the left bank to the right, and keeps on past +half a dozen other cafes, where patients whose prescriptions marshal them +beyond the Posthof drop off by the dozens and scores. + +The road on the left bank of the Tepl is wild and overhung at points with +wooded steeps, when it leaves the town; but on the right it is bordered +with shops and restaurants a great part of its length. In leafy nooks +between these, uphill walks begin their climb of the mountains, from the +foot of votive shrines set round with tablets commemorating in German, +French, Russian, Hebrew, Magyar and Czech, the cure of high-well-borns of +all those races and languages. Booths glittering with the lapidary's work +in the cheaper gems, or full of the ingenious figures of the toy-makers, +alternate with the shrines and the cafes on the way to the Posthof, and +with their shoulders against the overhanging cliff, spread for the +passing crowd a lure of Viennese jewelry in garnets, opals, amethysts, +and the like, and of such Bohemian playthings as carrot-eating rabbits, +worsted-working cats, dancing-bears, and peacocks that strut about the +feet of the passers and expand their iridescent tails in mimic pride. + +Burnamy got his charges with difficulty by the shrines in which they felt +the far-reflected charm of the crucifixes of the white-hot Italian +highways of their early travel, and by the toyshops where they had a +mechanical, out-dated impulse to get something for the children, ending +in a pang for the fact that they were children no longer. He waited +politely while Mrs. March made up her mind that she would not buy any +laces of the motherly old women who showed them under pent-roofs on +way-side tables; and he waited patiently at the gate of the +flower-gardens beyond the shops where March bought lavishly of sweetpease +from the businesslike flower-woman, and feigned a grateful joy in her +because she knew no English, and gave him a chance of speaking his +German. + +"You'll find," he said, as they crossed the road again, "that it's well +to trifle a good deal; it makes the time pass. I should still be lagging +along in my thirties if it hadn't been for fooling, and here I am well on +in my fifties, and Mrs. March is younger than ever." + +They were at the gate of the garden and grounds of the cafe at last, and +a turn of the path brought them to the prospect of its tables, under the +trees, between the two long glazed galleries where the breakfasters take +refuge at other tables when it rains; it rains nearly always, and the +trunks of the trees are as green with damp as if painted; but that +morning the sun was shining. At the verge of the open space a group of +pretty serving-maids, each with her name on a silver band pinned upon her +breast, met them and bade them a 'Guten Morgen' of almost cheerful note, +but gave way, to an eager little smiling blonde, who came pushing down +the path at sight of Burnamy, and claimed him for her own. + +"Ah, Lili! We want an extra good table, this morning. These are some +American Excellencies, and you must do your best for them." + +"Oh, yes," the girl answered in English, after a radiant salutation of +the Marches; "I get you one." + +"You are a little more formerly, to-day, and I didn't had one already." + +She ran among the tables along the edge of the western edge of the +gallery, and was far beyond hearing his protest that he was not earlier +than usual when she beckoned him to the table she had found. She had +crowded it in between two belonging to other girls, and by the time her +breakfasters came up she was ready for their order, with the pouting +pretence that the girls always tried to rob her of the best places. +Burnamy explained proudly, when she went, that none of the other girls +ever got an advantage of her; she had more custom than any three of them, +and she had hired a man to help her carry her orders. The girls were all +from the neighboring villages, he said, and they lived at home in the +winter on their summer tips; their wages were nothing, or less, for +sometimes they paid for their places. + +"What a mass of information!" said March. "How did you come by it?" + +"Newspaper habit of interviewing the universe." + +"It's not a bad habit, if one doesn't carry it too far. How did Lili +learn her English?" + +"She takes lessons in the winter. She's a perfect little electric motor. +I don't believe any Yankee girl could equal her." + +"She would expect to marry a millionaire if she did. What astonishes one +over here is to see how contentedly people prosper along on their own +level. And the women do twice the work of the men without expecting to +equal them in any other way. At Pupp's, if we go to one end of the +out-door restaurant, it takes three men to wait on us: one to bring our +coffee or tea, another to bring our bread and meat, and another to make +out our bill, and I have to tip all three of them. If we go to the other +end, one girl serves us, and I have to give only one fee; I make it less +than the least I give any three of the men waiters." + +"You ought to be ashamed of that," said his wife. + +"I'm not. I'm simply proud of your sex, my dear." + +"Women do nearly everything, here," said Burnamy, impartially. "They +built that big new Kaiserbad building: mixed the mortar, carried the +hods, and laid the stone." + +"That makes me prouder of the sex than ever. But come, Mr. Burnamy! Isn't +there anybody of polite interest that you know of in this crowd?" + +"Well, I can't say," Burnamy hesitated. + +The breakfasters had been thronging into the grove and the galleries; the +tables were already filled, and men were bringing other tables on their +heads, and making places for them, with entreaties for pardon everywhere; +the proprietor was anxiously directing them; the pretty serving-girls +were running to and from the kitchen in a building apart with shrill, +sweet promises of haste. The morning sun fell broken through the leaves +on the gay hats and dresses of the ladies, and dappled the figures of the +men with harlequin patches of light and shade. A tall woman, with a sort +of sharpened beauty, and an artificial permanency of tint in her cheeks +and yellow hair, came trailing herself up the sun-shot path, and found, +with hardy insistence upon the publicity, places for the surly-looking, +down-faced young man behind her, and for her maid and her black poodle; +the dog was like the black poodle out of Faust. Burnamy had heard her +history; in fact, he had already roughed out a poem on it, which he +called Europa, not after the old fable, but because it seemed to him that +she expressed Europe, on one side of its civilization, and had an +authorized place in its order, as she would not have had in ours. She was +where she was by a toleration of certain social facts which corresponds +in Europe to our reverence for the vested interests. In her history +there, had been officers and bankers; even foreign dignitaries; now there +was this sullen young fellow . . . . Burnamy had wondered if it would do +to offer his poem to March, but the presence of the original abashed him, +and in his mind he had torn the poem up, with a heartache for its +aptness. + +"I don't believe," he said, "that I recognize-any celebrities here." + +"I'm sorry," said March. "Mrs. March would have been glad of some +Hoheits, some Grafs and Grafins, or a few Excellenzes, or even some mere +well-borns. But we must try to get along with the picturesqueness." + +"I'm satisfied with the picturesqueness," said his wife. "Don't worry +about me, Mr. Burnamy." + +"Why can't we have this sort of thing at home?" + +"We're getting something like it in the roof-gardens," said March. "We +couldn't have it naturally because the climate is against it, with us. At +this time in the morning over there, the sun would be burning the life +out of the air, and the flies would be swarming on every table. At nine +A. M. the mosquitoes would be eating us up in such a grove as this. So we +have to use artifice, and lift our Posthof above the fly-line and the +mosquito-line into the night air. I haven't seen a fly since I came to +Europe. I really miss them; it makes me homesick." + +"There are plenty in Italy," his wife suggested. + +"We must get down there before we go home." + +"But why did nobody ever tell us that there were no flies in Germany? Why +did no traveller ever put it in his book? When your stewardess said so on +the steamer, I remember that you regarded it as a bluff." He turned to +Burnamy, who was listening with the deference of a contributor: "Isn't +Lili rather long? I mean for such a very prompt person. Oh, no!" + +But Burnamy got to his feet, and shouted "Fraulein!" to Lili; with her +hireling at her heels she was flying down a distant aisle between the +tables. She called back, with a face laughing over her shoulder, "In a +minute!" and vanished in the crowd. + +"Does that mean anything in particular? There's really no hurry." + +"Oh, I think she'll come now," said Burnamy. March protested that he had +only been amused at Lili's delay; but his wife scolded him for his +impatience; she begged Burnamy's pardon, and repeated civilities passed +between them. She asked if he did not think some of the young ladies were +pretty beyond the European average; a very few had style; the mothers +were mostly fat, and not stylish; it was well not to regard the fathers +too closely; several old gentlemen were clearing their throats behind +their newspapers, with noises that made her quail. There was no one so +effective as the Austrian officers, who put themselves a good deal on +show, bowing from their hips to favored groups; with the sun glinting +from their eyeglasses, and their hands pressing their sword-hilts, they +moved between the tables with the gait of tight-laced women. + +"They all wear corsets," Burnamy explained. + +"How much you know already!" said Mrs. March. "I can see that Europe +won't be lost on you in anything. Oh, who's that?" A lady whose costume +expressed saris at every point glided up the middle aisle of the grove +with a graceful tilt. Burnamy was silent. "She must be an American. Do +you know who she is?" + +"Yes." He hesitated, a little to name a woman whose tragedy had once +filled the newspapers. + +Mrs. March gazed after her with the fascination which such tragedies +inspire. "What grace! Is she beautiful?" + +"Very." Burnamy had not obtruded his knowledge, but somehow Mrs. March +did not like his knowing who she was, and how beautiful. She asked March +to look, but he refused. + +"Those things are too squalid," he said, and she liked him for saying it; +she hoped it would not be lost upon Burnamy. + +One of the waitresses tripped on the steps near them and flung the burden +off her tray on the stone floor before her; some of the dishes broke, and +the breakfast was lost. Tears came into the girl's eyes and rolled down +her hot cheeks. "There! That is what I call tragedy," said March. "She'll +have to pay for those things." + +"Oh, give her the money, dearest!" + +"How can I?" + +The girl had just got away with the ruin when Lili and her hireling +behind her came bearing down upon them with their three substantial +breakfasts on two well-laden trays. She forestalled Burnamy's reproaches +for her delay, laughing and bridling, while she set down the dishes of +ham and tongue and egg, and the little pots of coffee and frothed milk. + +"I could not so soon I wanted, because I was to serve an American +princess." + +Mrs. March started with proud conjecture of one of those noble +international marriages which fill our women with vainglory for such of +their compatriots as make them. + +"Oh, come now, Lili!" said Burnamy. "We have queens in America, but +nothing so low as princesses. This was a queen, wasn't it?" + +She referred the case to her hireling, who confirmed her. "All people say +it is princess," she insisted. + +"Well, if she's a princess we must look her up after breakfast," said +Burnamy. "Where is she sitting?" + +She pointed at a corner so far off on the other side that no one could be +distinguished, and then was gone, with a smile flashed over her shoulder, +and her hireling trying to keep up with her. + +"We're all very proud of Lili's having a hired man," said Burnamy. "We +think it reflects credit on her customers." + +March had begun his breakfast with-the voracious appetite of an +early-rising invalid. "What coffee!" + +He drew a long sigh after the first draught. + +"It's said to be made of burnt figs," said Burnamy, from the +inexhaustible advantage of his few days' priority in Carlsbad. + +"Then let's have burnt figs introduced at home as soon as possible. But +why burnt figs? That seems one of those doubts which are much more +difficult than faith." + +"It's not only burnt figs," said Burnamy, with amiable superiority, "if it +is burnt figs, but it's made after a formula invented by a consensus of +physicians, and enforced by the municipality. Every cafe in Carlsbad +makes the same kind of coffee and charges the same price." + +"You are leaving us very little to find out for ourselves," sighed March. + +"Oh, I know a lot more things. Are you fond of fishing?" + +"Not very." + +"You can get a permit to catch trout in the Tepl, but they send an +official with you who keeps count, and when you have had your sport, the +trout belong to the municipality just as they did before you caught +them." + +"I don't see why that isn't a good notion: the last thing I should want +to do would be to eat a fish that I had caught, and that I was personally +acquainted with. Well, I'm never going away from Carlsbad. I don't wonder +people get their doctors to tell them to come back." + +Burnamy told them a number of facts he said Stoller had got together +about the place, and had given him to put in shape. It was run in the +interest of people who had got out of order, so that they would keep +coming to get themselves in order again; you could hardly buy an +unwholesome meal in the town; all the cooking was 'kurgemass'. He won +such favor with his facts that he could not stop in time: he said to +March, "But if you ever should have a fancy for a fish of your personal +acquaintance, there's a restaurant up the Tepl, where they let you pick +out your trout in the water; then they catch him and broil him for you, +and you know what you are eating." + +"Is it a municipal restaurant?" + +"Semi-municipal," said Burnamy, laughing. + +"We'll take Mrs. March," said her husband, and in her gravity Burnamy +felt the limitations of a woman's sense of humor, which always define +themselves for men so unexpectedly. + +He did what he could to get back into her good graces by telling her what +he knew about distinctions and dignities that he now saw among the +breakfasters. The crowd had now grown denser till the tables were set +together in such labyrinths that any one who left the central aisle was +lost in them. The serving-girls ran more swiftly to and fro, responding +with a more nervous shrillness to the calls of "Fraulein! Fraulein!" that +followed them. The proprietor, in his bare head, stood like one paralyzed +by his prosperity, which sent up all round him the clash of knives and +crockery, and the confusion of tongues. It was more than an hour before +Burnamy caught Lili's eye, and three times she promised to come and be +paid before she came. Then she said, "It is so nice, when you stay a +little," and when he told her of the poor Fraulein who had broken the +dishes in her fall near them, she almost wept with tenderness; she almost +winked with wickedness when he asked if the American princess was still +in her place. + +"Do go and see who it can be!" Mrs. March entreated. "We'll wait here," +and he obeyed. "I am not sure that I like him," she said, as soon as he +was out of hearing. "I don't know but he's coarse, after all. Do you +approve of his knowing so many people's 'taches' already?" + +"Would it be any better later?" he asked in tern. "He seemed to find you +interested." + +"It's very different with us; we're not young," she urged, only half +seriously. + +Her husband laughed. "I see you want me to defend him. Oh, hello!" he +cried, and she saw Burnamy coming toward them with a young lady, who was +nodding to them from as far as she could see them. "This is the easy kind +of thing that makes you Blush for the author if you find it in a novel." + + + + +XXX. + +Mrs. March fairly took Miss Triscoe in her arms to kiss her. "Do you know +I felt it must be you, all the time! When did you come? Where is your +father? What hotel are you staying at?" + +It appeared, while Miss Triscoe was shaking hands with March, that it was +last night, and her father was finishing his breakfast, and it was one of +the hotels on the hill. On the way back to her father it appeared that he +wished to consult March's doctor; not that there was anything the matter. + +The general himself was not much softened by the reunion with his +fellow-Americans; he confided to them that his coffee was poisonous; but +he seemed, standing up with the Paris-New York Chronicle folded in his +hand, to have drunk it all. Was March going off on his forenoon tramp? He +believed that was part of the treatment, which was probably all humbug, +though he thought of trying it, now he was there. He was told the walks +were fine; he looked at Burnamy as if he had been praising them, and +Burnamy said he had been wondering if March would not like to try a +mountain path back to his hotel; he said, not so sincerely, that he +thought Mrs. March would like it. + +"I shall like your account of it," she answered. "But I'll walk back on a +level, if you please." + +"Oh, yes," Miss Triscoe pleaded, "come with us!" + +She played a little comedy of meaning to go back with her father so +gracefully that Mrs. March herself could scarcely have told just where +the girl's real purpose of going with Burnamy began to be evident, or +just how she managed to make General Triscoe beg to have the pleasure of +seeing Mrs. March back to her hotel. + +March went with the young people across the meadow behind the Posthof and +up into the forest, which began at the base of the mountain. At first +they tried to keep him in the range of their talk; but he fell behind +more and more, and as the talk narrowed to themselves it was less and +less possible to include him in it. When it began to concern their common +appreciation of the Marches, they even tried to get out of his hearing. + +"They're so young in their thoughts," said Burnamy, "and they seem as +much interested in everything as they could have been thirty years ago. +They belong to a time when the world was a good deal fresher than it is +now; don't you think? I mean, in the eighteen-sixties." + +"Oh, yes, I can see that." + +"I don't know why we shouldn't be born older in each generation than +people were in the last. Perhaps we are," he suggested. + +"I don't know how you mean," said the girl, keeping vigorously up with +him; she let him take the jacket she threw off, but she would not have +his hand at the little steeps where he wanted to give it. + +"I don't believe I can quite make it out myself. But fancy a man that +began to act at twenty, quite unconsciously of course, from the past +experience of the whole race--" + +"He would be rather a dreadful person, wouldn't he?" + +"Rather monstrous, yes," he owned, with a laugh. "But that's where the +psychological interest would come in." + +As if she did not feel the notion quite pleasant she turned from it. "I +suppose you've been writing all sorts of things since you came here." + +"Well, it hasn't been such a great while as it's seemed, and I've had Mr. +Stoller's psychological interests to look after." + +"Oh, yes! Do you like him?" + +"I don't know. He's a lump of honest selfishness. He isn't bad. You know +where to have him. He's simple, too." + +"You mean, like Mr. March?" + +"I didn't mean that; but why not? They're not of the same generation, but +Stoller isn't modern." + +"I'm very curious to see him," said the girl. + +"Do you want me to introduce him?" + +"You can introduce him to papa." + +They stopped and looked across the curve of the mounting path, down on +March, who had sunk on a way-side seat, and was mopping his forehead. He +saw them, and called up: "Don't wait for me. I'll join you, gradually." + +"I don't want to lose you," Burnamy called back, but he kept on with Miss +Triscoe. "I want to get the Hirschensprung in," he explained. "It's the +cliff where a hunted deer leaped down several hundred feet to get away +from an emperor who was after him." + +"Oh, yes. They have them everywhere." + +"Do they? Well, anyway, there's a noble view up there." + +There was no view on the way up. The Germans' notion of a woodland is +everywhere that of a dense forest such as their barbarous tribes +primevally herded in. It means the close-set stems of trees, with their +tops interwoven in a roof of boughs and leaves so densely that you may +walk dry through it almost as long as a German shower lasts. When the sun +shines there is a pleasant greenish light in the aisles, shot here and +there with the gold that trickles through. There is nothing of the +accident of an American wood in these forests, which have been watched +and weeded by man ever since they burst the soil. They remain nurseries, +but they have the charm which no human care can alienate. The smell of +their bark and their leaves, and of the moist, flowerless earth about +their roots, came to March where he sat rich with the memories of his +country-bred youth, and drugged all consciousness of his long life in +cities since, and made him a part of nature, with dulled interests and +dimmed perspectives, so that for the moment he had the enjoyment of +exemption from care. There was no wild life to penetrate his isolation; +no birds, not a squirrel, not an insect; an old man who had bidden him +good-morning, as he came up, kept fumbling at the path with his hoe, and +was less intrusive than if he had not been there. + +March thought of the impassioned existence of these young people playing +the inevitable comedy of hide and seek which the youth of the race has +played from the beginning of time. The other invalids who haunted the +forest, and passed up and down before him in fulfilment of their several +prescriptions, had a thin unreality in spite of the physical bulk that +prevailed among them, and they heightened the relief that the +forest-spirit brought him from the strenuous contact of that young drama. +He had been almost painfully aware that the persons in it had met, +however little they knew it, with an eagerness intensified by their brief +separation, and he fancied it was the girl who had unconsciously operated +their reunion in response to the young man's longing, her will making +itself electrically felt through space by that sort of wireless +telegraphy which love has long employed, and science has just begun to +imagine. + +He would have been willing that they should get home alone, but he knew +that his wife would require an account of them from him, and though he +could have invented something of the kind, if it came to the worst, he +was aware that it would not do for him to arrive without them. The +thought goaded him from his seat, and he joined the upward procession of +his fellow-sick, as it met another procession straggling downward; the +ways branched in all directions, with people on them everywhere, bent +upon building up in a month the health which they would spend the rest of +the year in demolishing. + +He came upon his charges unexpectedly at a turn of the path, and Miss +Triscoe told him that he ought to have been with them for the view from +the Hirschensprung. It was magnificent, she said, and she made Burnamy +corroborate her praise of it, and agree with her that it was worth the +climb a thousand times; he modestly accepted the credit she appeared +willing to give him, of inventing the Hirschensprung. + + + + +XXXI. + +Between his work for Stoller and what sometimes seemed the +obstructiveness of General Triscoe, Burnamy was not very much with Miss +Triscoe. He was not devout, but he went every Sunday to the pretty +English church on the hill, where he contributed beyond his means to the +support of the English clergy on the Continent, for the sake of looking +at her back hair during the service, and losing himself in the graceful +lines which defined, the girl's figure from the slant of her flowery hat +to the point where the pewtop crossed her elastic waist. One happy +morning the general did not come to church, and he had the fortune to +walk home with her to her pension, where she lingered with him a moment, +and almost made him believe she might be going to ask him to come in. + +The next evening, when he was sauntering down the row of glittering shops +beside the Tepl, with Mrs. March, they overtook the general and his +daughter at a place where the girl was admiring some stork-scissors in +the window; she said she wished she were still little, so that she could +get them. They walked home with the Triscoes, and then he hurried Mrs. +March back to the shop. The man had already put up his shutters, and was +just closing his door, but Burnamy pushed in, and asked to look at the +stork-scissors they had seen in the window. The gas was out, and the +shopman lighted a very dim candle, to show them. + +"I knew you wanted to get them for her, after what she said, Mrs. March," +he laughed, nervously, "and you must let me lend you the money." + +"Why, of course!" she answered, joyfully humoring his feint. "Shall I put +my card in for the man to send home to her with them?" + +"Well--no. No. Not your card--exactly. Or, yes! Yes, you must, I +suppose." + +They made the hushing street gay with their laughter; the next evening +Miss Triscoe came upon the Marches and Burnamy where they sat after +supper listening to the concert at Pupp's, and thanked Mrs. March for the +scissors. Then she and Burnamy had their laugh again, and Miss Triscoe +joined them, to her father's frowning mystification. He stared round for +a table; they were all taken, and he could not refuse the interest +Burnamy made with the waiters to bring them one and crowd it in. He had +to ask him to sup with them, and Burnamy sat down and heard the concert +through beside Miss Triscoe. + +"What is so tremendously amusing in a pair of stork-scissors?" March +demanded, when his wife and he were alone. + +"Why, I was wanting to tell you, dearest," she began, in a tone which he +felt to be wheedling, and she told the story of the scissors. + +"Look here, my dear! Didn't you promise to let this love-affair alone?" + +"That was on the ship. And besides, what would you have done, I should +like to know? Would you have refused to let him buy them for her?" She +added, carelessly, "He wants us to go to the Kurhaus ball with him." + +"Oh, does he!" + +"Yes. He says he knows that she can get her father to let her go if we +will chaperon them. And I promised that you would." + +"That I would?" + +"It will do just as well if you go. And it will be very amusing; you can +see something of Carlsbad society." + +"But I'm not going!" he declared. "It would interfere with my cure. The +sitting up late would be bad enough, but I should get very hungry, and I +should eat potato salad and sausages, and drink beer, and do all sorts of +unwholesome things." + +"Nonsense! The refreshments will be 'kurgemass', of course." + +"You can go yourself," he said. + +A ball is not the same thing for a woman after fifty as it is before +twenty, but still it has claims upon the imagination, and the novel +circumstance of a ball in the Kurhaus in Carlsbad enhanced these for Mrs. +March. It was the annual reunion which is given by municipal authority in +the large hall above the bathrooms; it is frequented with safety and +pleasure by curious strangers, and now, upon reflection, it began to have +for Mrs. March the charm of duty; she believed that she could finally +have made March go in her place, but she felt that she ought really to go +in his, and save him from the late hours and the late supper. + +"Very well, then," she said at last, "I will go." + +It appeared that any civil person might go to the reunion who chose to +pay two florins and a half. There must have been some sort of +restriction, and the ladies of Burnamy's party went with a good deal of +amused curiosity to see what the distinctions were; but they saw none +unless it was the advantages which the military had. The long hall over +the bathrooms shaped itself into a space for the dancing at one end, and +all the rest of it was filled with tables, which at half past eight were +crowded with people, eating, drinking, and smoking. The military enjoyed +the monopoly of a table next the rail dividing the dancing from the +dining space. There the tight-laced Herr Hauptmanns and Herr Lieutenants +sat at their sausage and beer and cigars in the intervals of the waltzes, +and strengthened themselves for a foray among the gracious Fraus and +Frauleins on the benches lining three sides of the dancing-space. From +the gallery above many civilian spectators looked down upon the gayety, +and the dress-coats of a few citizens figured among the uniforms. + +As the evening wore on some ladies of greater fashion found their way to +the dancing-floor, and toward ten o'clock it became rather crowded. A +party of American girls showed their Paris dresses in the transatlantic +versions of the waltz. At first they danced with the young men who came +with them; but after a while they yielded to the custom of the place, and +danced with any of the officers who asked them. + +"I know it's the custom," said Mrs. March to Miss Triscoe, who was at her +side in one of the waltzes she had decided to sit out, so as not to be +dancing all the time with Burnamy, "but I never can like it without an +introduction." + +"No," said the girl, with the air of putting temptation decidedly away, +"I don't believe papa would, either." + +A young officer came up, and drooped in mute supplication before her. She +glanced at Mrs. March, who turned her face away; and she excused herself +with the pretence that she had promised the dance, and by good fortune, +Burnamy, who had been unscrupulously waltzing with a lady he did not +know, came up at the moment. She rose and put her hand on his arm, and +they both bowed to the officer before they whirled away. The officer +looked after them with amiable admiration; then he turned to Mrs. March +with a light of banter in his friendly eyes, and was unmistakably asking +her to dance. She liked his ironical daring, she liked it so much that +she forgot her objection to partners without introductions; she forgot +her fifty-odd years; she forgot that she was a mother of grown children +and even a mother-in-law; she remembered only the step of her out-dated +waltz. + +It seemed to be modern enough for the cheerful young officer, and they +were suddenly revolving with the rest. . . A tide of long-forgotten +girlhood welled up in her heart, and she laughed as she floated off on it +past the astonished eyes of Miss Triscoe and Burnamy. She saw them +falter, as if they had lost their step in their astonishment; then they +seemed both to vanish, and her partner had released her, and was helping +Miss Triscoe up from the floor; Burnamy was brushing the dust from his +knees, and the citizen who had bowled them over was boisterously +apologizing and incessantly bowing. + +"Oh, are you hurt?" Mrs. March implored. "I'm sure you must be killed; +and I did it! I don't know, what I was thinking of!" + +The girl laughed. "I'm not hurt a bit!" + +They had one impulse to escape from the place, and from the sympathy and +congratulation. In the dressing-room she declared again that she was all +right. "How beautifully you waltz, Mrs. March!" she said, and she laughed +again, and would not agree with her that she had been ridiculous. "But +I'm glad those American girls didn't see me. And I can't be too thankful +papa didn't come!" + +Mrs. March's heart sank at the thought of what General Triscoe would +think of her. "You must tell him I did it. I can never lift up my head!" + +"No, I shall not. No one did it," said the girl, magnanimously. She +looked down sidelong at her draperies. "I was so afraid I had torn my +dress! I certainly heard something rip." + +It was one of the skirts of Burnamy's coat, which he had caught into his +hand and held in place till he could escape to the men's dressing-room, +where he had it pinned up so skillfully that the damage was not suspected +by the ladies. He had banged his knee abominably too; but they did not +suspect that either, as he limped home on the air beside them, first to +Miss Triscoe's pension, and then to Mrs. March's hotel. + +It was quite eleven o'clock, which at Carlsbad is as late as three in the +morning anywhere else, when she let herself into her room. She decided +not to tell her husband, then; and even at breakfast, which they had at +the Posthof, she had not got to her confession, though she had told him +everything else about the ball, when the young officer with whom she had +danced passed between the tables near her. He caught her eye and bowed +with a smile of so much meaning that March asked, "Who's your pretty +young friend?" + +"Oh, that!" she answered carelessly. "That was one of the officers at the +ball," and she laughed. + +"You seem to be in the joke, too," he said. "What is it?" + +"Oh, something. I'll tell you some time. Or perhaps you'll find out." + +"I'm afraid you won't let me wait." + +"No, I won't," and now she told him. She had expected teasing, ridicule, +sarcasm, anything but the psychological interest mixed with a sort of +retrospective tenderness which he showed. "I wish I could have seen you; +I always thought you danced well." He added: "It seems that you need a +chaperon too." + +The next morning, after March and General Triscoe had started off upon +one of the hill climbs, the young people made her go with them for a walk +up the Tepl, as far as the cafe of the Freundschaftsaal. In the grounds +an artist in silhouettes was cutting out the likenesses of people who +supposed themselves to have profiles, and they begged Mrs. March to sit +for hers. It was so good that she insisted on Miss Triscoe's sitting in +turn, and then Burnamy. Then he had the inspiration to propose that they +should all three sit together, and it appeared that such a group was +within the scope of the silhouettist's art; he posed them in his little +bower, and while he was mounting the picture they took turns, at five +kreutzers each, in listening to American tunes played by his Edison +phonograph. + +Mrs. March felt that all this was weakening her moral fibre; but she +tried to draw the line at letting Burnamy keep the group. "Why not?" he +pleaded. + +"You oughtn't to ask," she returned. "You've no business to have Miss +Triscoe's picture, if you must know." + +"But you're there to chaperon us!" he persisted. + +He began to laugh, and they all laughed when she said, "You need a +chaperon who doesn't lose her head, in a silhouette." But it seemed +useless to hold out after that, and she heard herself asking, "Shall we +let him keep it, Miss Triscoe?" + +Burnamy went off to his work with Stoller, carrying the silhouette with +him, and she kept on with Miss Triscoe to her hotel. In turning from the +gate after she parted with the girl she found herself confronted with +Mrs. Adding and Rose. The ladies exclaimed at each other in an +astonishment from which they had to recover before they could begin to +talk, but from the first moment Mrs. March perceived that Mrs. Adding had +something to say. The more freely to say it she asked Mrs. March into her +hotel, which was in the same street with the pension of the Triscoes, and +she let her boy go off about the exploration of Carlsbad; he promised to +be back in an hour. + +"Well, now what scrape are you in?" March asked when his wife came home, +and began to put off her things, with signs of excitement which he could +not fail to note. He was lying down after a long tramp, and he seemed +very comfortable. + +His question suggested something of anterior import, and she told him +about the silhouettes, and the advantage the young people had taken of +their power over her through their knowledge of her foolish behavior at +the ball. + +He said, lazily: "They seem to be working you for all you're worth. Is +that it?" + +"No; there is something worse. Something's happened which throws all that +quite in the shade. Mrs. Adding is here." + +"Mrs. Adding?" he repeated, with a dimness for names which she would not +allow was growing on him. + +"Don't be stupid, dear! Mrs. Adding, who sat opposite Mr. Kenby on the +Norumbia. The mother of the nice boy." + +"Oh, yes! Well, that's good!" + +"No, it isn't! Don't say such a thing--till you know!" she cried, with a +certain shrillness which warned him of an unfathomed seriousness in the +fact. He sat up as if better to confront the mystery. "I have been at her +hotel, and she has been telling me that she's just come from Berlin, and +that Mr. Kenby's been there, and--Now I won't have you making a joke of +it, or breaking out about it, as if it were not a thing to be looked for; +though of course with the others on our hands you're not to blame for not +thinking of it. But you can see yourself that she's young and +good-looking. She did speak beautifully of her son, and if it were not +for him, I don't believe she would hesitate--" + +"For heaven's sake, what are you driving at?" March broke in, and she +answered him as vehemently: + +"He's asked her to marry him!" + +"Kenby? Mrs. Adding?" + +"Yes!" + +"Well, now, Isabel, this won't do! They ought to be ashamed of +themselves. With that morbid, sensitive boy! It's shocking--" + +"Will you listen? Or do you want me to stop?" He arrested himself at her +threat, and she resumed, after giving her contempt of his turbulence time +to sink in, "She refused him, of course!" + +"Oh, all right, then!" + +"You take it in such a way that I've a great mind not to tell you +anything more about it." + +"I know you have," he said, stretching himself out again; "but you'll do +it, all the same. You'd have been awfully disappointed if I had been calm +and collected." + +"She refused him," she began again, "although she respects him, because +she feels that she ought to devote herself to her son. Of course she's +very young, still; she was married when she was only nineteen to a man +twice her age, and she's not thirty-five yet. I don't think she ever +cared much for her husband; and she wants you to find out something about +him." + +"I never heard of him. I--" + +Mrs. March made a "tchck!" that would have recalled the most consequent +of men from the most logical and coherent interpretation to the true +intent of her words. He perceived his mistake, and said, resolutely: +"Well, I won't do it. If she's refused him, that's the end of it; she +needn't know anything about him, and she has no right to." + +"Now I think differently," said Mrs. March, with an inductive air. "Of +course she has to know about him, now." She stopped, and March turned his +head and looked expectantly at her. "He said he would not consider her +answer final, but would hope to see her again and--She's afraid he may +follow her--What are you looking at me so for?" + +"Is he coming here?" + +"Am I to blame if he is? He said he was going to write to her." + +March burst into a laugh. "Well, they haven't been beating about the +bush! When I think how Miss Triscoe has been pursuing Burnamy from the +first moment she set eyes on him, with the settled belief that she was +running from him, and he imagines that he has been boldly following her, +without the least hope from her, I can't help admiring the simple +directness of these elders." + +"And if Kenby wants to talk with you, what will you say?" she cut in +eagerly. + +"I'll say I don't like the subject. What am I in Carlsbad for? I came for +the cure, and I'm spending time and money on it. I might as well go and +take my three cups of Felsenquelle on a full stomach as to listen to +Kenby." + +"I know it's bad for you, and I wish we had never seen those people," +said Mrs. March. "I don't believe he'll want to talk with you; but if--" + +"Is Mrs. Adding in this hotel? I'm not going to have them round in my +bread-trough!" + +"She isn't. She's at one of the hotels on the hill." + +"Very well, let her stay there, then. They can manage their love-affairs +in their own way. The only one I care the least for is the boy." + +"Yes, it is forlorn for him. But he likes Mr. Kenby, and--No, it's +horrid, and you can't make it anything else!" + +"Well, I'm not trying to." He turned his face away. "I must get my nap, +now." After she thought he must have fallen asleep, he said, "The first +thing you know, those old Eltwins will be coming round and telling us +that they're going to get divorced." Then he really slept. + + + + +XXXII. + +The mid-day dinner at Pupp's was the time to see the Carlsbad world, and +the Marches had the habit of sitting long at table to watch it. + +There was one family in whom they fancied a sort of literary quality, as +if they had come out of some pleasant German story, but they never knew +anything about them. The father by his dress must have been a Protestant +clergyman; the mother had been a beauty and was still very handsome; the +daughter was good-looking, and of a good-breeding which was both girlish +and ladylike. They commended themselves by always taking the table d'hote +dinner, as the Marches did, and eating through from the soup and the rank +fresh-water fish to the sweet, upon the same principle: the husband ate +all the compote and gave the others his dessert, which was not good for +him. A young girl of a different fascination remained as much a mystery. +She was small and of an extreme tenuity, which became more bewildering as +she advanced through her meal, especially at supper, which she made of a +long cucumber pickle, a Frankfort sausage of twice the pickle's length, +and a towering goblet of beer; in her lap she held a shivering little +hound; she was in the decorous keeping of an elderly maid, and had every +effect of being a gracious Fraulein. A curious contrast to her Teutonic +voracity was the temperance of a young Latin swell, imaginably from +Trieste, who sat long over his small coffee and cigarette, and tranquilly +mused upon the pages of an Italian newspaper. At another table there was +a very noisy lady, short and fat, in flowing draperies of white, who +commanded a sallow family of South-Americans, and loudly harangued them +in South-American Spanish; she flared out in a picture which nowhere +lacked strong effects; and in her background lurked a mysterious black +face and figure, ironically subservient to the old man, the mild boy, and +the pretty young girl in the middle distance of the family group. + +Amidst the shows of a hardened worldliness there were touching glimpses +of domesticity and heart: a young bride fed her husband soup from her own +plate with her spoon, unabashed by the publicity; a mother and her two +pretty daughters hung about a handsome officer, who must have been newly +betrothed to one of the girls; and, the whole family showed a helpless +fondness for him, which he did not despise, though he held it in check; +the girls dressed alike, and seemed to have for their whole change of +costume a difference from time to time in the color of their sleeves. The +Marches believed they had seen the growth of the romance which had +eventuated so happily; and they saw other romances which did not in any +wise eventuate. Carlsbad was evidently one of the great marriage marts of +middle Europe, where mothers brought their daughters to be admired, and +everywhere the flower of life was blooming for the hand of love. It blew +by on all the promenades in dresses and hats as pretty as they could be +bought or imagined; but it was chiefly at Pupp's that it flourished. For +the most part it seemed to flourish in vain, and to be destined to be put +by for another season to dream, bulblike, of the coming summer in the +quiet of Moldavian and Transylvanian homes. + +Perhaps it was oftener of fortunate effect than the spectators knew; but +for their own pleasure they would not have had their pang for it less; +and March objected to having a more explicit demand upon his sympathy. +"We could have managed," he said, at the close of their dinner, as he +looked compassionately round upon the parterre of young girls, "we could +have managed with Burnamy and Miss Triscoe; but to have Mrs. Adding and +Kenby launched upon us is too much. Of course I like Kenby, and if the +widow alone were concerned I would give him my blessing: a wife more or a +widow less is not going to disturb the equilibrium of the universe; +but--" He stopped, and then he went on: "Men and women are well enough. +They complement each other very agreeably, and they have very good times +together. But why should they get in love?--It is sure to make them +uncomfortable to themselves and annoying to others." He broke off, and +stared about him. "My dear, this is really charming--almost as charming +as the Posthof." The crowd spread from the open vestibule of the hotel +and the shelter of its branching pavilion roofs until it was dimmed in +the obscurity of the low grove across the way in an ultimate depth where +the musicians were giving the afternoon concert. Between its two +stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such +effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and +flowed in mingled rose and lilac, pink and yellow, and white and orange, +and all the middle tints of modern millinery. Above on one side were the +agreeable bulks of architecture, in the buff and gray of Carlsbad; and +far beyond on the other were the upland slopes, with villas and long +curves of country roads, belted in with miles of wall. "It would be about +as offensive to have a love-interest that one personally knew about +intruded here," he said, "as to have a two-spanner carriage driven +through this crowd. It ought to be forbidden by the municipality." + +Mrs. March listened with her ears, but not with her eyes, and she +answered: "See that handsome young Greek priest! Isn't he an +archimandrite? The portier said he was." + +"Then let him pass for an archimandrite. Now," he recurred to his +grievance again, dreamily, "I have got to take Papa Triscoe in hand, and +poison his mind against Burnamy, and I shall have to instil a few drops +of venomous suspicion against Kenby into the heart of poor little Rose +Adding. Oh;" he broke out, "they will spoil everything. They'll be with +us morning, noon, and night," and he went on to work the joke of repining +at his lot. The worst thing, he said, would be the lovers' pretence of +being interested in something besides themselves, which they were no more +capable of than so many lunatics. How could they care for pretty girls +playing tennis on an upland level, in the waning afternoon? Or a cartful +of peasant women stopping to cross themselves at a way-side shrine? Or a +whistling boy with holes in his trousers pausing from some wayside +raspberries to touch his hat and say good-morning? Or those preposterous +maidens sprinkling linen on the grass from watering-pots while the skies +were full of rain? Or that blacksmith shop where Peter the Great made a +horseshoe. Or the monument of the young warrior-poet Koerner, with a +gentle-looking girl and her mother reading and knitting on a bench before +it? These simple pleasures sufficed them, but what could lovers really +care for them? A peasant girl flung down on the grassy road-side, fast +asleep, while her yoke-fellow, the gray old dog, lay in his harness near +her with one drowsy eye half open for her and the other for the contents +of their cart; a boy chasing a red squirrel in the old upper town beyond +the Tepl, and enlisting the interest of all the neighbors; the negro +door-keeper at the Golden Shield who ought to have spoken our Southern +English, but who spoke bad German and was from Cairo; the sweet afternoon +stillness in the woods; the good German mothers crocheting at the Posthof +concerts. Burnamy as a young poet might hate felt the precious quality of +these things, if his senses had not been holden by Miss Triscoe; and she +might have felt it if only he had done so. But as it was it would be lost +upon their preoccupation; with Mrs. Adding and Kenby it would be +hopeless. + +A day or two after Mrs. March had met Mrs. Adding, she went with her +husband to revere a certain magnificent blackamoor whom he had discovered +at the entrance of one of the aristocratic hotels on the Schlossberg, +where he performed the function of a kind of caryatid, and looked, in the +black of his skin and the white of his flowing costume, like a colossal +figure carved in ebony and ivory. They took a roundabout way through a +street entirely of villa-pensions; every house in Carlsbad but one is a +pension if it is not an hotel; but these were of a sort of sentimental +prettiness; with each a little garden before it, and a bower with an iron +table in it for breakfasting and supping out-doors; and he said that they +would be the very places for bridal couples who wished to spend the +honey-moon in getting well of the wedding surfeit. She denounced him for +saying such a thing as that, and for his inconsistency in complaining of +lovers while he was willing to think of young married people. He +contended that there was a great difference in the sort of demand that +young married people made upon the interest of witnesses, and that they +were at least on their way to sanity; and before they agreed, they had +come to the hotel with the blackamoor at the door. While they lingered, +sharing the splendid creature's hospitable pleasure in the spectacle he +formed, they were aware of a carriage with liveried coachman and footman +at the steps of the hotel; the liveries were very quiet and +distinguished, and they learned that the equipage was waiting for the +Prince of Coburg, or the Princess of Montenegro, or Prince Henry of +Prussia; there were differing opinions among the twenty or thirty +bystanders. Mrs. March said she did not care which it was; and she was +patient of the denouement, which began to postpone itself with delicate +delays. After repeated agitations at the door among portiers, +proprietors, and waiters, whose fluttered spirits imparted their thrill +to the spectators, while the coachman and footman remained +sculpturesquely impassive in their places, the carriage moved aside and +let an energetic American lady and her family drive up to the steps. The +hotel people paid her a tempered devotion, but she marred the effect by +rushing out and sitting on a balcony to wait for the delaying royalties. +There began to be more promises of their early appearance; a footman got +down and placed himself at the carriage door; the coachman stiffened +himself on his box; then he relaxed; the footman drooped, and even +wandered aside. There came a moment when at some signal the carriage +drove quite away from the portal and waited near the gate of the +stableyard; it drove back, and the spectators redoubled their attention. +Nothing happened, and some of them dropped off. At last an indescribable +significance expressed itself in the official group at the door; a man in +a high hat and dresscoat hurried out; a footman hurried to meet him; they +spoke inaudibly together. The footman mounted to his place; the coachman +gathered up his reins and drove rapidly out of the hotel-yard, down the +street, round the corner, out of sight. The man in the tall hat and +dress-coat went in; the official group at the threshold dissolved; the +statue in ivory and ebony resumed its place; evidently the Hoheit of +Coburg, or Montenegro, or Prussia, was not going to take the air. + +"My dear, this is humiliating." + +"Not at all! I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Think how near we +came to seeing them!" + +"I shouldn't feel so shabby if we had seen them. But to hang round here +in this plebeian abeyance, and then to be defeated and defrauded at last! +I wonder how long this sort of thing is going on?" + +"What thing?" + +"This base subjection of the imagination to the Tom Foolery of the Ages." + +"I don't know what you mean. I'm sure it's very natural to want to see a +Prince." + +"Only too natural. It's so deeply founded in nature that after denying +royalty by word and deed for a hundred years, we Americans are hungrier +for it than anybody else. Perhaps we may come back to it!" + +"Nonsense!" + +They looked up at the Austrian flag on the tower of the hotel, languidly +curling and uncurling in the bland evening air, as it had over a thousand +years of stupid and selfish monarchy, while all the generous republics of +the Middle Ages had perished, and the commonwealths of later times had +passed like fever dreams. That dull, inglorious empire had antedated or +outlived Venice and Genoa, Florence and Siena, the England of Cromwell, +the Holland of the Stadtholders, and the France of many revolutions, and +all the fleeting democracies which sprang from these. + +March began to ask himself how his curiosity differed from that of the +Europeans about him; then he became aware that these had detached +themselves, and left him exposed to the presence of a fellow countryman. +It was Otterson, with Mrs. Otterson; he turned upon March with hilarious +recognition. "Hello! Most of the Americans in Carlsbad seem to be hanging +round here for a sight of these kings. Well, we don't have a great many +of 'em, and it's natural we shouldn't want to miss any. But now, you +Eastern fellows, you go to Europe every summer, and yet you don't seem to +get enough of 'em. Think it's human nature, or did it get so ground into +us in the old times that we can't get it out, no difference what we say?" + +"That's very much what I've been asking myself," said March. "Perhaps +it's any kind of show. We'd wait nearly as long for the President to come +out, wouldn't we?" + +"I reckon we would. But we wouldn't for his nephew, or his second +cousin." + +"Well, they wouldn't be in the way of the succession." + +"I guess you're right." The Iowan seemed better satisfied with March's +philosophy than March felt himself, and he could not forbear adding: + +"But I don't, deny that we should wait for the President because he's a +kind of king too. I don't know that we shall ever get over wanting to see +kings of some kind. Or at least my wife won't. May I present you to Mrs. +March?" + +"Happy to meet you, Mrs. March," said the Iowan. "Introduce you to Mrs. +Otterson. I'm the fool in my family, and I know just how you feel about a +chance like this. I don't mean that you're--" + +They all laughed at the hopeless case, and Mrs. March said, with one of +her unexpected likings: "I understand, Mr. Otterson. And I would rather +be our kind of fool than the kind that pretends not to care for the sight +of a king." + +"Like you and me, Mrs. Otterson," said March. + +"Indeed, indeed," said the lady, "I'd like to see a king too, if it +didn't take all night. Good-evening," she said, turning her husband about +with her, as if she suspected a purpose of patronage in Mrs. March, and +was not going to have it. + +Otterson looked over his shoulder to explain, despairingly: "The trouble +with me is that when I do get a chance to talk English, there's such a +flow of language it carries me away, and I don't know just where I'm +landing." + + + + +XXXIII. + +There were several kings and their kindred at Carlsbad that summer. One +day the Duchess of Orleans drove over from Marienbad, attended by the +Duke on his bicycle. After luncheon, they reappeared for a moment before +mounting to her carriage with their Secretaries: two young French +gentlemen whose dress and bearing better satisfied Mrs. March's exacting +passion for an aristocratic air in their order. The Duke was fat and +fair, as a Bourbon should be, and the Duchess fatter, though not so fair, +as became a Hapsburg, but they were both more plebeian-looking than their +retainers, who were slender as well as young, and as perfectly appointed +as English tailors could imagine them. + +"It wouldn't do for the very highest sort of Highhotes," March declared, +"to look their own consequence personally; they have to leave that, like +everything else, to their inferiors." + +By a happy heterophemy of Mrs. March's the German Hoheit had now become +Highhote, which was so much more descriptive that they had permanently +adopted it, and found comfort to their republican pride in the mockery +which it poured upon the feudal structure of society. They applied it +with a certain compunction, however, to the King of Servia, who came a +few days after the Duke and Duchess: he was such a young King, and of +such a little country. They watched for him from the windows of the +reading-room, while the crowd outside stood six deep on the three sides +of the square before the hotel, and the two plain public carriages which +brought the King and his suite drew tamely up at the portal, where the +proprietor and some civic dignitaries received him. His moderated +approach, so little like that of royalty on the stage, to which Americans +are used, allowed Mrs. March to make sure of the pale, slight, +insignificant, amiable-looking youth in spectacles as the sovereign she +was ambuscading. Then no appeal to her principles could keep her from +peeping through the reading-room door into the rotunda, where the King +graciously but speedily dismissed the civic gentlemen and the proprietor, +and vanished into the elevator. She was destined to see him so often +afterwards that she scarcely took the trouble to time her dining and +supping by that of the simple potentate, who had his meals in one of the +public rooms, with three gentlemen of his suite, in sack-coats like +himself, after the informal manner of the place. + +Still another potentate, who happened that summer to be sojourning +abroad, in the interval of a successful rebellion, was at the opera one +night with some of his faithful followers. Burnamy had offered Mrs. +March, who supposed that he merely wanted her and her husband with him, +places in a box; but after she eagerly accepted, it seemed that he wished +her to advise him whether it would do to ask Miss Triscoe and her father +to join them. + +"Why not?" she returned, with an arching of the eyebrows. + +"Why," he said, "perhaps I had better make a clean breast of it." + +"Perhaps you had," she said, and they both laughed, though he laughed +with a knot between his eyes. + +"The fact is, you know, this isn't my treat, exactly. It's Mr. +Stoller's." At the surprise in her face he hurried on. "He's got back his +first letter in the paper, and he's so much pleased with the way he reads +in print, that he wants to celebrate." + +"Yes," said Mrs. March, non-committally. + +Burnamy laughed again. "But he's bashful, and he isn't sure that you +would all take it in the right way. He wants you as friends of mine; and +he hasn't quite the courage to ask you himself." + +This seemed to Mrs. March so far from bad that she said: "That's very +nice of him. Then he's satisfied with--with your help? I'm glad of that." + +"Thank you. He's met the Triscoes, and he thought it would be pleasant to +you if they went, too." + +"Oh, certainly." + +"He thought," Burnamy went on, with the air of feeling his way, "that we +might all go to the opera, and then--then go for a little supper +afterwards at Schwarzkopf's." + +He named the only place in Carlsbad where you can sup so late as ten +o'clock; as the opera begins at six, and is over at half past eight, none +but the wildest roisterers frequent the place. + +"Oh!" said Mrs. March. "I don't know how a late supper would agree with +my husband's cure. I should have to ask him." + +"We could make it very hygienic," Burnamy explained. + +In repeating his invitation she blamed Burnamy's uncandor so much that +March took his part, as perhaps she intended, and said, "Oh, nonsense," +and that he should like to go in for the whole thing; and General Triscoe +accepted as promptly for himself and his daughter. That made six people, +Burnamy counted up, and he feigned a decent regret that there was not +room for Mrs. Adding and her son; he would have liked to ask them. + +Mrs. March did not enjoy it so much as coming with her husband alone when +they took two florin seats in the orchestra for the comedy. The comedy +always began half an hour earlier than the opera, and they had a +five-o'clock supper at the Theatre-Cafe before they went, and they got to +sleep by nine o'clock; now they would be up till half past ten at least, +and that orgy at Schwarzkopf's might not be at all good for him. But +still she liked being there; and Miss Triscoe made her take the best +seat; Burnamy and Stoller made the older men take the other seats beside +the ladies, while they sat behind, or stood up, when they, wished to see, +as people do in the back of a box. Stoller was not much at ease in +evening dress, but he bore himself with a dignity which was not perhaps +so gloomy as it looked; Mrs. March thought him handsome in his way, and +required Miss Triscoe to admire him. As for Burnamy's beauty it was not +necessary to insist upon that; he had the distinction of slender youth; +and she liked to think that no Highhote there was of a more patrician +presence than this yet unprinted contributor to 'Every Other Week'. He +and Stoller seemed on perfect terms; or else in his joy he was able to +hide the uneasiness which she had fancied in him from the first time she +saw them together, and which had never been quite absent from his manner +in Stoller's presence. Her husband always denied that it existed, or if +it did that it was anything but Burnamy's effort to get on common ground +with an inferior whom fortune had put over him. + +The young fellow talked with Stoller, and tried to bring him into the +range of the general conversation. He leaned over the ladies, from time +to time, and pointed out the notables whom he saw in the house; she was +glad, for his sake, that he did not lean less over her than over Miss +Triscoe. He explained certain military figures in the boxes opposite, and +certain ladies of rank who did not look their rank; Miss Triscoe, to Mrs. +March's thinking, looked their united ranks, and more; her dress was very +simple, but of a touch which saved it from being insipidly girlish; her +beauty was dazzling. + +"Do you see that old fellow in the corner chair just behind the +orchestra?" asked Burnamy. "He's ninety-six years old, and he comes to +the theatre every night, and falls asleep as soon as the curtain rises, +and sleeps through till the end of the act." + +"How dear!" said the girl, leaning forward to fix the nonagenarian with +her glasses, while many other glasses converged upon her. "Oh, wouldn't +you like to know him, Mr. March?" + +"I should consider it a liberal education. They have brought these things +to a perfect system in Europe. There is nothing to make life pass +smoothly like inflexible constancy to an entirely simple custom. My +dear," he added to his wife, "I wish we'd seen this sage before. He'd +have helped us through a good many hours of unintelligible comedy. I'm +always coming as Burnamy's guest, after this." + +The young fellow swelled with pleasure in his triumph, and casting an eye +about the theatre to cap it, he caught sight of that other potentate. He +whispered joyfully, "Ah! We've got two kings here to-night," and he +indicated in a box of their tier just across from that where the King of +Servia sat, the well-known face of the King of New York. + +"He isn't bad-looking," said March, handing his glass to General Triscoe. +"I've not seen many kings in exile; a matter of a few Carlist princes and +ex-sovereign dukes, and the good Henry V. of France, once, when I was +staying a month in Venice; but I don't think they any of them looked the +part better. I suppose he has his dream of recurring power like the +rest." + +"Dream!" said General Triscoe with the glass at his eyes. "He's dead sure +of it." + +"Oh, you don't really mean that!" + +"I don't know why I should have changed my mind." + +"Then it's as if we were in the presence of Charles II. just before he +was called back to England, or Napoleon in the last moments of Elba. It's +better than that. The thing is almost unique; it's a new situation in +history. Here's a sovereign who has no recognized function, no legal +status, no objective existence. He has no sort of public being, except in +the affection of his subjects. It took an upheaval little short of an +earthquake to unseat him. His rule, as we understand it, was bad for all +classes; the poor suffered more than the rich; the people have now had +three years of self-government; and yet this wonderful man has such a +hold upon the masses that he is going home to win the cause of oppression +at the head of the oppressed. When he's in power again, he will be as +subjective as ever, with the power of civic life and death, and an +idolatrous following perfectly ruthless in the execution of his will." + +"We've only begun," said the general. "This kind of king is municipal, +now; but he's going to be national. And then, good-by, Republic!" + +"The only thing like it," March resumed, too incredulous of the evil +future to deny himself the aesthetic pleasure of the parallel, "is the +rise of the Medici in Florence, but even the Medici were not mere +manipulators of pulls; they had some sort of public office, with some +sort of legislated tenure of it. The King of New York is sovereign by +force of will alone, and he will reign in the voluntary submission of the +majority. Is our national dictator to be of the same nature and quality?" + +"It would be the scientific evolution, wouldn't it?" + +The ladies listened with the perfunctory attention which women pay to any +sort of inquiry which is not personal. Stoller had scarcely spoken yet; +he now startled them all by demanding, with a sort of vindictive force, +"Why shouldn't he have the power, if they're willing to let him?" + +"Yes," said General Triscoe, with a tilt of his head towards March. +"That's what we must ask ourselves more and more." + +March leaned back in his chair, and looked up over his shoulder at +Stoller. "Well, I don't know. Do you think it's quite right for a man to +use an unjust power, even if others are willing that he should?" + +Stoller stopped with an air of bewilderment as if surprised on the point +of saying that he thought just this. He asked instead, "What's wrong +about it?" + +"Well, that's one of those things that have to be felt, I suppose. But if +a man came to you, and offered to be your slave for a certain +consideration--say a comfortable house, and a steady job, that wasn't too +hard--should you feel it morally right to accept the offer? I don't say +think it right, for there might be a kind of logic for it." + +Stoller seemed about to answer; he hesitated; and before he had made any +response, the curtain rose. + + + + +XXXIV. + +There are few prettier things than Carlsbad by night from one of the many +bridges which span the Tepl in its course through the town. If it is a +starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted firmament +in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the houses on +either side contribute a planetary splendor of their own. By nine o'clock +everything is hushed; not a wheel is heard at that dead hour; the few +feet shuffling stealthily through the Alte Wiese whisper a caution of +silence to those issuing with a less guarded tread from the opera; the +little bowers that overhang the stream are as dark and mute as the +restaurants across the way which serve meals in them by day; the whole +place is as forsaken as other cities at midnight. People get quickly home +to bed, or if they have a mind to snatch a belated joy, they slip into +the Theater-Cafe, where the sleepy Frauleins serve them, in an exemplary +drowse, with plates of cold ham and bottles of the gently gaseous waters +of Giesshubl. Few are of the bold badness which delights in a supper at +Schwarzkopf's, and even these are glad of the drawn curtains which hide +their orgy from the chance passer. + +The invalids of Burnamy's party kept together, strengthening themselves +in a mutual purpose not to be tempted to eat anything which was not +strictly 'kurgemass'. Mrs. March played upon the interest which each of +them felt in his own case so artfully that she kept them talking of their +cure, and left Burnamy and Miss Triscoe to a moment on the bridge, by +which they profited, while the others strolled on, to lean against the +parapet and watch the lights in the skies and the water, and be alone +together. The stream shone above and below, and found its way out of and +into the darkness under the successive bridges; the town climbed into the +night with lamp-lit windows here and there, till the woods of the +hill-sides darkened down to meet it, and fold it in an embrace from which +some white edifice showed palely in the farthest gloom. + +He tried to make her think they could see that great iron crucifix which +watches over it day and night from its piny cliff. He had a fancy for a +poem, very impressionistic, which should convey the notion of the +crucifix's vigil. He submitted it to her; and they remained talking till +the others had got out of sight and hearing; and she was letting him keep +the hand on her arm which he had put there to hold her from falling over +the parapet, when they were both startled by approaching steps, and a +voice calling, "Look here! Who's running this supper party, anyway?" + +His wife had detached March from her group for the mission, as soon as +she felt that the young people were abusing her kindness. They answered +him with hysterical laughter, and Burnamy said, "Why, it's Mr. Stoller's +treat, you know." + +At the restaurant, where the proprietor obsequiously met the party on the +threshold and bowed them into a pretty inner room, with a table set for +their supper, Stoller had gained courage to play the host openly. He +appointed General Triscoe to the chief seat; he would have put his +daughter next to him, if the girl had not insisted upon Mrs. March's +having the place, and going herself to sit next to March, whom she said +she had not been able to speak a word to the whole evening. But she did +not talk a great deal to him; he smiled to find how soon he dropped out +of the conversation, and Burnamy, from his greater remoteness across the +table, dropped into it. He really preferred the study of Stoller, whose +instinct of a greater worldly quality in the Triscoes interested him; he +could see him listening now to what General Triscoe was saying to Mrs. +March, and now to what Burnamy was saying to Miss Triscoe; his strong, +selfish face, as he turned it on the young people, expressed a mingled +grudge and greed that was very curious. + +Stoller's courage, which had come and gone at moments throughout, rose at +the end, and while they lingered at the table well on to the hour of ten, +he said, in the sort of helpless offence he had with Burnamy, "What's the +reason we can't all go out tomorrow to that old castle you was talking +about?" + +"To Engelhaus? I don't know any reason, as far as I'm concerned," +answered Burnamy; but he refused the initiative offered him, and Stoller +was obliged to ask March: + +"You heard about it?" + +"Yes." General Triscoe was listening, and March added for him, "It was +the hold of an old robber baron; Gustavus Adolphus knocked it down, and +it's very picturesque, I believe." + +"It sounds promising," said the general. "Where is it?" + +"Isn't to-morrow our mineral bath?" Mrs. March interposed between her +husband and temptation. + +"No; the day after. Why, it's about ten or twelve miles out on the old +postroad that Napoleon took for Prague." + +"Napoleon knew a good road when he saw it," said the general, and he +alone of the company lighted a cigar. He was decidedly in favor of the +excursion, and he arranged for it with Stoller, whom he had the effect of +using for his pleasure as if he were doing him a favor. They were six, +and two carriages would take them: a two-spanner for four, and a +one-spanner for two; they could start directly after dinners and get home +in time for supper. + +Stoller asserted himself to say: "That's all right, then. I want you to +be my guests, and I'll see about the carriages." He turned to Burnamy: +"Will you order them?" + +"Oh," said the young fellow, with a sort of dryness, "the portier will +get them." + +"I don't understand why General Triscoe was so willing to accept. Surely, +he can't like that man!" said Mrs. March to her husband in their own +room. + +"Oh, I fancy that wouldn't be essential. The general seems to me, capable +of letting even an enemy serve his turn. Why didn't you speak, if you +didn't want to go?" + +"Why didn't you?" + +"I wanted to go." + +"And I knew it wouldn't do to let Miss Triscoe go alone; I could see that +she wished to go." + +"Do you think Burnamy did?" + +"He seemed rather indifferent. And yet he must have realized that he +would be with Miss Triscoe the whole afternoon." + + + + +XXXV. + +If Burnamy and Miss Triscoe took the lead in the one-spanner, and the +others followed in the two-spanner, it was not from want of politeness on +the part of the young people in offering to give up their places to each +of their elders in turn. It would have been grotesque for either March or +Stoller to drive with the girl; for her father it was apparently no +question, after a glance at the more rigid uprightness of the seat in the +one-spanner; and he accepted the place beside Mrs. March on the back seat +of the two-spanner without demur. He asked her leave to smoke, and then +he scarcely spoke to her. But he talked to the two men in front of him +almost incessantly, haranguing them upon the inferiority of our +conditions and the futility of our hopes as a people, with the effect of +bewildering the cruder arrogance of Stoller, who could have got on with +Triscoe's contempt for the worthlessness of our working-classes, but did +not know what to do with his scorn of the vulgarity and venality of their +employers. He accused some of Stoller's most honored and envied +capitalists of being the source of our worst corruptions, and guiltier +than the voting-cattle whom they bought and sold. + +"I think we can get rid of the whole trouble if we go at it the right +way," Stoller said, diverging for the sake of the point he wished to +bring in. "I believe in having the government run on business principles. +They've got it here in Carlsbad, already, just the right sort of thing, +and it works. I been lookin' into it, and I got this young man, +yonder"--he twisted his hand in the direction of the one-spanner! "to +help me put it in shape. I believe it's going to make our folks think, +the best ones among them. Here!" He drew a newspaper out of his pocket, +folded to show two columns in their full length, and handed it to +Triscoe, who took it with no great eagerness, and began to run his eye +over it. "You tell me what you think of that. I've put it out for a kind +of a feeler. I got some money in that paper, and I just thought I'd let +our people see how a city can be managed on business principles." + +He kept his eye eagerly upon Triscoe, as if to follow his thought while +he read, and keep him up to the work, and he ignored the Marches so +entirely that they began in self-defence to talk with each other. + +Their carriage had climbed from Carlsbad in long irregular curves to the +breezy upland where the great highroad to Prague ran through fields of +harvest. They had come by heights and slopes of forest, where the serried +stems of the tall firs showed brown and whitish-blue and grew straight as +stalks of grain; and now on either side the farms opened under a sky of +unwonted cloudlessness. Narrow strips of wheat and rye, which the men +were cutting with sickles, and the women in red bodices were binding, +alternated with ribands of yellowing oats and grass, and breadths of +beets and turnips, with now and then lengths of ploughed land. In the +meadows the peasants were piling their carts with heavy rowen, the girls +lifting the hay on the forks, and the men giving themselves the lighter +labor of ordering the load. From the upturned earth, where there ought to +have been troops of strutting crows, a few sombre ravens rose. But they +could not rob the scene of its gayety; it smiled in the sunshine with +colors which vividly followed the slope of the land till they were dimmed +in the forests on the far-off mountains. Nearer and farther, the cottages +and villages shone in the valleys, or glimmered through the veils of the +distant haze. Over all breathed the keen pure air of the hills, with a +sentiment of changeless eld, which charmed March, back to his boyhood, +where he lost the sense of his wife's presence, and answered her vaguely. +She talked contentedly on in the monologue to which the wives of +absent-minded men learn to resign themselves. They were both roused from +their vagary by the voice of General Triscoe. He was handing back the +folded newspaper to Stoller, and saying, with a queer look at him over +his glasses, "I should like to see what your contemporaries have to say +to all that." + +"Well, sir," Stoller returned, "maybe I'll have the chance to show you. +They got my instructions over there to send everything to me." + +Burnamy and Miss Triscoe gave little heed to the landscape as landscape. +They agreed that the human interest was the great thing on a landscape, +after all; but they ignored the peasants in the fields and meadows, who +were no more to them than the driver on the box, or the people in the +two-spanner behind. They were talking of the hero and heroine of a novel +they had both read, and he was saying, "I suppose you think he was justly +punished." + +"Punished?" she repeated. "Why, they got married, after all!" + +"Yes, but you could see that they were not going to be happy." + +"Then it seems to me that she was punished; too." + +"Well, yes; you might say that. The author couldn't help that." + +Miss Triscoe was silent a moment before she said: + +"I always thought the author was rather hard on the hero. The girl was +very exacting." + +"Why," said Burnamy, "I supposed that women hated anything like deception +in men too much to tolerate it at all. Of course, in this case, he didn't +deceive her; he let her deceive herself; but wasn't that worse?" + +"Yes, that was worse. She could have forgiven him for deceiving her." + +"Oh!" + +"He might have had to do that. She wouldn't have minded his fibbing +outright, so much, for then it wouldn't have seemed to come from his +nature. But if he just let her believe what wasn't true, and didn't say a +word to prevent her, of course it was worse. It showed something weak, +something cowardly in him." + +Burnamy gave a little cynical laugh. "I suppose it did. But don't you +think it's rather rough, expecting us to have all the kinds of courage?" + +"Yes, it is," she assented. "That is why I say she was too exacting. But +a man oughn't to defend him." + +Burnamy's laugh had more pleasure in it, now. "Another woman might?" + +"No. She might excuse him." + +He turned to look back at the two-spanner; it was rather far behind, and +he spoke to their driver bidding him go slowly till it caught up with +them. By the time it did so, they were so close to it that they could +distinguish the lines of its wandering and broken walls. Ever since they +had climbed from the wooded depths of the hills above Carlsbad to the +open plateau, it had shown itself in greater and greater detail. The +detached mound of rock on which it stood rose like an island in the midst +of the plain, and commanded the highways in every direction. + +"I believe," Burnamy broke out, with a bitterness apparently relevant to +the ruin alone, "that if you hadn't required any quarterings of nobility +from him, Stoller would have made a good sort of robber baron. He's a +robber baron by nature, now, and he wouldn't have any scruple in levying +tribute on us here in our one-spanner, if his castle was in good repair +and his crossbowmen were not on a strike. But they would be on a strike, +probably, and then he would lock them out, and employ none but non-union +crossbowmen." + +If Miss Triscoe understood that he arraigned the morality as well as the +civility of his employer, she did not take him more seriously than he +meant, apparently, for she smiled as she said, "I don't see how you can +have anything to do with him, if you feel so about him." + +"Oh," Burnamy replied in kind, "he buys my poverty and not my will. And +perhaps if I thought better of myself, I should respect him more." + +"Have you been doing something very wicked?" + +"What should you have to say to me, if I had?" he bantered. + +"Oh, I should have nothing at all to say to you," she mocked back. + +They turned a corner of the highway, and drove rattling through a village +street up a long slope to the rounded hill which it crowned. A church at +its base looked out upon an irregular square. + +A gaunt figure of a man, with a staring mask, which seemed to hide a +darkling mind within, came out of the church, and locked it behind him. +He proved to be the sacristan, and the keeper of all the village's claims +upon the visitors' interest; he mastered, after a moment, their wishes in +respect to the castle, and showed the path that led to it; at the top, he +said, they would find a custodian of the ruins who would admit them. + + + + +XXXVI. + +The path to the castle slanted upward across the shoulder of the hill, +to a certain point, and there some rude stone steps mounted more +directly. Wilding lilac-bushes, as if from some forgotten garden, +bordered the ascent; the chickory opened its blue flower; the clean +bitter odor of vermouth rose from the trodden turf; but Nature spreads no +such lavish feast in wood or field in the Old World as she spoils us with +in the New; a few kinds, repeated again and again, seem to be all her +store, and man must make the most of them. Miss Triscoe seemed to find +flowers enough in the simple bouquet which Burnamy put together for her. +She took it, and then gave it back to him, that she might have both hands +for her skirt, and so did him two favors. + +A superannuated forester of the nobleman who owns the ruin opened a gate +for the party at the top, and levied a tax of thirty kreutzers each upon +them, for its maintenance. The castle, by his story, had descended from +robber sire to robber son, till Gustavus knocked it to pieces in the +sixteenth century; three hundred years later, the present owner restored +it; and now its broken walls and arches, built of rubble mixed with +brick, and neatly pointed up with cement, form a ruin satisfyingly +permanent. The walls were not of great extent, but such as they were they +enclosed several dungeons and a chapel, all underground, and a cistern +which once enabled the barons and their retainers to water their wine in +time of siege. + +From that height they could overlook the neighboring highways in every +direction, and could bring a merchant train to, with a shaft from a +crossbow, or a shot from an arquebuse, at pleasure. With General +Triscoe's leave, March praised the strategic strength of the unique +position, which he found expressive of the past, and yet suggestive of +the present. It was more a difference in method than anything else that +distinguished the levy of customs by the authorities then and now. What +was the essential difference, between taking tribute of travellers +passing on horseback, and collecting dues from travellers arriving by +steamer? They did not pay voluntarily in either case; but it might be +proof of progress that they no longer fought the customs officials. + +"Then you believe in free trade," said Stoller, severely. + +"No. I am just inquiring which is the best way of enforcing the tariff +laws." + +"I saw in the Paris Chronicle, last night," said Miss Triscoe, "that +people are kept on the docks now for hours, and ladies cry at the way +their things are tumbled over by the inspectors." + +"It's shocking," said Mrs. March, magisterially. + +"It seems to be a return to the scenes of feudal times," her husband +resumed. "But I'm glad the travellers make no resistance. I'm opposed to +private war as much as I am to free trade." + +"It all comes round to the same thing at last," said General Triscoe. +"Your precious humanity--" + +"Oh, I don't claim it exclusively," March protested. + +"Well, then, our precious humanity is like a man that has lost his road. +He thinks he is finding his way out, but he is merely rounding on his +course, and coming back to where he started." + +Stoller said, "I think we ought to make it so rough for them, over here, +that they will come to America and set up, if they can't stand the +duties." + +"Oh, we ought to make it rough for them anyway," March consented. + +If Stoller felt his irony, he did not know what to answer. He followed +with his eyes the manoeuvre by which Burnamy and Miss Triscoe eliminated +themselves from the discussion, and strayed off to another corner of the +ruin, where they sat down on the turf in the shadow of the wall; a thin, +upland breeze drew across them, but the sun was hot. The land fell away +from the height, and then rose again on every side in carpetlike fields +and in long curving bands, whose parallel colors passed unblended into +the distance. "I don't suppose," Burnamy said, "that life ever does much +better than this, do you? I feel like knocking on a piece of wood and +saying 'Unberufen.' I might knock on your bouquet; that's wood." + +"It would spoil the flowers," she said, looking down at them in her belt. +She looked up and their eyes met. + +"I wonder," he said, presently, "what makes us always have a feeling of +dread when we are happy?" + +"Do you have that, too?" she asked. + +"Yes. Perhaps it's because we know that change must come, and it must be +for the worse." + +"That must be it. I never thought of it before, though." + +"If we had got so far in science that we could predict psychological +weather, and could know twenty-four hours ahead when a warm wave of bliss +or a cold wave of misery was coming, and prepare for smiles and tears +beforehand--it may come to that." + +"I hope it won't. I'd rather not know when I was to be happy; it would +spoil the pleasure; and wouldn't be any compensation when it was the +other way." + +A shadow fell across them, and Burnamy glanced round to see Stoller +looking down at them, with a slant of the face that brought his aquiline +profile into relief. "Oh! Have a turf, Mr. Stoller?" he called gayly up +to him. + +"I guess we've seen about all there is," he answered. "Hadn't we better +be going?" He probably did not mean to be mandatory. + +"All right," said Burnamy, and he turned to speak to Miss Triscoe again +without further notice of him. + +They all descended to the church at the foot of the hill where the weird +sacristan was waiting to show them the cold, bare interior, and to +account for its newness with the fact that the old church had been burnt, +and this one built only a few years before. Then he locked the doors +after them, and ran forward to open against their coming the chapel of +the village cemetery, which they were to visit after they had fortified +themselves for it at the village cafe. + +They were served by a little hunch-back maid; and she told them who lived +in the chief house of the village. It was uncommonly pretty; where all +the houses were picturesque, and she spoke of it with respect as the +dwelling of a rich magistrate who was clearly the great man of the place. +March admired the cat which rubbed against her skirt while she stood and +talked, and she took his praises modestly for the cat; but they wrought +upon the envy, of her brother so that he ran off to the garden, and came +back with two fat, sleepy-eyed puppies which he held up, with an arm +across each of their stomachs, for the acclaim of the spectators. + +"Oh, give him something!" Mrs. March entreated. "He's such a dear." + +"No, no! I am not going to have my little hunchback and her cat outdone," +he refused; and then he was about to yield. + +"Hold on!" said Stoller, assuming the host. "I got the change." + +He gave the boy a few kreutzers, when Mrs. March had meant her husband to +reward his naivete with half a florin at least; but he seemed to feel +that he had now ingratiated himself with the ladies, and he put himself +in charge of them for the walk to the cemetery chapel; he made Miss +Triscoe let him carry her jacket when she found it warm. + +The chapel is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the Jesuit brother who +designed it, two or three centuries ago, indulged a devotional fancy in +the triangular form of the structure and the decorative details. +Everything is three-cornered; the whole chapel, to begin with, and then +the ark of the high altar in the middle of it, and each of the three +side-altars. The clumsy baroque taste of the architecture is a German +version of the impulse that was making Italy fantastic at the time; the +carving is coarse, and the color harsh and unsoftened by years, though it +is broken and obliterated in places. + +The sacristan said that the chapel was never used for anything but +funeral services, and he led the way out into the cemetery, where he +wished to display the sepultural devices. The graves here were planted +with flowers, and some were in a mourning of black pansies; but a space +fenced apart from the rest held a few neglected mounds, overgrown with +weeds and brambles: This space, he said, was for suicides; but to March +it was not so ghastly as the dapper grief of certain tombs in consecrated +ground where the stones had photographs of the dead on porcelain let into +them. One was the picture of a beautiful young woman, who had been the +wife of the local magnate; an eternal love was vowed to her in the +inscription, but now, the sacristan said, with nothing of irony, the +magnate was married again, and lived in that prettiest house of the +village. He seemed proud of the monument, as the thing worthiest the +attention of the strangers, and he led them with less apparent +hopefulness to the unfinished chapel representing a Gethsemane, with the +figure of Christ praying and his apostles sleeping. It is a subject much +celebrated in terra-cotta about Carlsbad, and it was not a novelty to his +party; still, from its surroundings, it had a fresh pathos, and March +tried to make him understand that they appreciated it. He knew that his +wife wished the poor man to think he had done them a great favor in +showing it; he had been touched with all the vain shows of grief in the +poor, ugly little place; most of all he had felt the exile of those who +had taken their own lives and were parted in death from the more patient +sufferers who had waited for God to take them. With a curious, unpainful +self-analysis he noted that the older members of the party, who in the +course of nature were so much nearer death, did not shrink from its +shows; but the young girl and the young man had not borne to look on +them, and had quickly escaped from the place, somewhere outside the gate. +Was it the beginning, the promise of that reconciliation with death which +nature brings to life at last, or was it merely the effect, or defect, of +ossified sensibilities, of toughened nerves? + +"That is all?" he asked of the spectral sacristan. + +"That is all," the man said, and March felt in his pocket for a coin +commensurate to the service he had done them; it ought to be something +handsome. + +"No, no," said Stoller, detecting his gesture. "Your money a'n't good." + +He put twenty or thirty kreutzers into the hand of the man, who regarded +them with a disappointment none the less cruel because it was so patient. +In France, he would have been insolent; in Italy, he would have frankly +said it was too little; here, he merely looked at the money and whispered +a sad "Danke." + +Burnamy and Miss Triscoe rose from the grassy bank outside where they +were sitting, and waited for the elders to get into their two-spanner. + +"Oh, have I lost my glove in there?" said Mrs. March, looking at her +hands and such parts of her dress as a glove might cling to. + +"Let me go and find it for you," Burnamy entreated. + +"Well," she consented, and she added, "If the sacristan has found it, +give him something for me something really handsome, poor fellow." + +As Burnamy passed her, she let him see that she had both her gloves, and +her heart yearned upon him for his instant smile of intelligence: some +men would have blundered out that she had the lost glove in her hand. He +came back directly, saying, "No, he didn't find it." + +She laughed, and held both gloves up. "No wonder! I had it all the time. +Thank you ever so much." + +"How are we going to ride back?" asked Stoller. + +Burnamy almost turned pale; Miss Triscoe smiled impenetrably. No one else +spoke, and Mrs. March said, with placid authority, "Oh, I think the way +we came, is best." + +"Did that absurd creature," she apostrophized her husband as soon as she +got him alone after their arrival at Pupp's, "think I was going to let +him drive back with Agatha?" + +"I wonder," said March, "if that's what Burnamy calls her now?" + +"I shall despise him if it isn't." + + + + +XXXVII. + +Burnamy took up his mail to Stoller after the supper which they had eaten +in a silence natural with two men who have been off on a picnic together. +He did not rise from his writing-desk when Burnamy came in, and the young +man did not sit down after putting his letters before him. He said, with +an effort of forcing himself to speak at once, "I have looked through the +papers, and there is something that I think you ought to see." + +"What do you mean?" said Stoller. + +Burnamy laid down three or four papers opened to pages where certain +articles were strongly circumscribed in ink. The papers varied, but their +editorials did not, in purport at least. Some were grave and some were +gay; one indignantly denounced; another affected an ironical +bewilderment; the third simply had fun with the Hon. Jacob Stoller. They +all, however, treated his letter on the city government of Carlsbad as +the praise of municipal socialism, and the paper which had fun with him +gleefully congratulated the dangerous classes on the accession of the +Honorable Jacob to their ranks. + +Stoller read the articles, one after another, with parted lips and +gathering drops of perspiration on his upper lip, while Burnamy waited on +foot. He flung the papers all down at last. "Why, they're a pack of +fools! They don't know what they're talking about! I want city government +carried on on business principles, by the people, for the people. I don't +care what they say! I know I'm right, and I'm going ahead on this line if +it takes all--" The note of defiance died out of his voice at the sight +of Burnamy's pale face. "What's the matter with you?" + +"There's nothing the matter with me." + +"Do you mean to tell me it is"--he could not bring himself to use the +word--"what they say?" + +"I suppose," said Burnamy, with a dry mouth, "it's what you may call +municipal socialism." + +Stoller jumped from his seat. "And you knew it when you let me do it?" + +"I supposed you knew what you were about." + +"It's a lie!" Stoller advanced upon him, wildly, and Burnamy took a step +backward. + +"Look out!" shouted Burnamy. "You never asked me anything about it. You +told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were +such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking +about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can +make it right with the managers by spending a little more money than you +expected to spend." + +Stoller started as if the word money reminded him of something. "I can +take care of myself, young man. How much do I owe you?" + +"Nothing!" said Burnamy, with an effort for grandeur which failed him. + +The next morning as the Marches sat over their coffee at the Posthof, he +came dragging himself toward them with such a haggard air that Mrs. March +called, before he reached their table, "Why, Mr. Burnamy, what's the +matter?" + +He smiled miserably. "Oh, I haven't slept very well. May I have my coffee +with you? I want to tell you something; I want you to make me. But I +can't speak till the coffee comes. Fraulein!" he besought a waitress +going off with a tray near them. "Tell Lili, please, to bring me some +coffee--only coffee." + +He tried to make some talk about the weather, which was rainy, and the +Marches helped him, but the poor endeavor lagged wretchedly in the +interval between the ordering and the coming of the coffee. "Ah, thank +you, Lili," he said, with a humility which confirmed Mrs. March in her +instant belief that he had been offering himself to Miss Triscoe and been +rejected. After gulping his coffee, he turned to her: "I want to say +good-by. I'm going away." + +"From Carlsbad?" asked Mrs. March with a keen distress. + +The water came into his eyes. "Don't, don't be good to me, Mrs. March! I +can't stand it. But you won't, when you know." + +He began to speak of Stoller, first to her, but addressing himself more +and more to the intelligence of March, who let him go on without +question, and laid a restraining hand upon his wife when he saw her about +to prompt him. At the end, "That's all," he said, huskily, and then he +seemed to be waiting for March's comment. He made none, and the young +fellow was forced to ask, "Well, what do you think, Mr. March?" + +"What do you think yourself?" + +"I think, I behaved badly," said Burnamy, and a movement of protest from +Mrs. March nerved him to add: "I could make out that it was not my +business to tell him what he was doing; but I guess it was; I guess I +ought to have stopped him, or given him a chance to stop himself. I +suppose I might have done it, if he had treated me decently when I turned +up a day late, here; or hadn't acted toward me as if I were a hand in his +buggy-works that had come in an hour after the whistle sounded." + +He set his teeth, and an indignant sympathy shone in Mrs. March's eyes; +but her husband only looked the more serious. + +He asked gently, "Do you offer that fact as an explanation, or as a +justification." + +Burnamy laughed forlornly. "It certainly wouldn't justify me. You might +say that it made the case all the worse for me." March forbore to say, +and Burnamy went on. "But I didn't suppose they would be onto him so +quick, or perhaps at all. I thought--if I thought anything--that it would +amuse some of the fellows in the office, who know about those things." He +paused, and in March's continued silence he went on. "The chance was one +in a hundred that anybody else would know where he had brought up." + +"But you let him take that chance," March suggested. + +"Yes, I let him take it. Oh, you know how mixed all these things are!" + +"Yes." + +"Of course I didn't think it out at the time. But I don't deny that I had +a satisfaction in the notion of the hornets' nest he was poking his thick +head into. It makes me sick, now, to think I had. I oughtn't to have let +him; he was perfectly innocent in it. After the letter went, I wanted to +tell him, but I couldn't; and then I took the chances too. I don't +believe he could have ever got forward in politics; he's too honest--or +he isn't dishonest in the right way. But that doesn't let me out. I don't +defend myself! I did wrong; I behaved badly. But I've suffered for it. + +"I've had a foreboding all the time that it would come to the worst, and +felt like a murderer with his victim when I've been alone with Stoller. +When I could get away from him I could shake it off, and even believe +that it hadn't happened. You can't think what a nightmare it's been! +Well, I've ruined Stoller politically, but I've ruined myself, too. I've +spoiled my own life; I've done what I can never explain to--to the people +I want to have believe in me; I've got to steal away like the thief I am. +Good-by!" He jumped to his feet, and put out his hand to March, and then +to Mrs. March. + +"Why, you're not going away now!" she cried, in a daze. + +"Yes, I am. I shall leave Carlsbad on the eleven-o'clock train. I don't +think I shall see you again." He clung to her hand. "If you see General +Triscoe--I wish you'd tell them I couldn't--that I had to--that I was +called away suddenly--Good-by!" He pressed her hand and dropped it, and +mixed with the crowd. Then he came suddenly back, with a final appeal to +March: "Should you--do you think I ought to see Stoller, and--and tell +him I don't think I used him fairly?" + +"You ought to know--" March began. + +But before he could say more, Burnamy said, "You're right," and was off +again. + +"Oh, how hard you were with him, my dear!" Mrs. March lamented. + +"I wish," he said, "if our boy ever went wrong that some one would be as +true to him as I was to that poor fellow. He condemned himself; and he +was right; he has behaved very badly." + +"You always overdo things so, when you act righteously!" + +"Now, Isabel!" + +"Oh, yes, I know what you will say. But I should have tempered justice +with mercy." + +Her nerves tingled with pity for Burnamy, but in her heart she was glad +that her husband had had strength to side with him against himself, and +she was proud of the forbearance with which he had done it. In their +earlier married life she would have confidently taken the initiative on +all moral questions. She still believed that she was better fitted for +their decision by her Puritan tradition and her New England birth, but +once in a great crisis when it seemed a question of their living, she had +weakened before it, and he, with no such advantages, had somehow met the +issue with courage and conscience. She could not believe he did so by +inspiration, but she had since let him take the brunt of all such issues +and the responsibility. He made no reply, and she said: "I suppose you'll +admit now there was always something peculiar in the poor boy's manner to +Stoller." + +He would confess no more than that there ought to have been. "I don't see +how he could stagger through with that load on his conscience. I'm not +sure I like his being able to do so." + +She was silent in the misgiving which she shared with him, but she said: +"I wonder how far it has gone with him and Miss Triscoe?" + +"Well, from his wanting you to give his message to the general in the +plural--" + +"Don't laugh! It's wicked to laugh! It's heartless!" she cried, +hysterically. "What will he do, poor fellow?" + +"I've an idea that he will light on his feet, somehow. But, at any rate, +he's doing the right thing in going to own up to Stoller." + +"Oh, Stoller! I care nothing for Stoller! Don't speak to me of Stoller!" + +Burnamy fond the Bird of Prey, as he no longer had the heart to call him, +walking up and down in his room like an eagle caught in a trap. He +erected his crest fiercely enough, though, when the young fellow came in +at his loudly shouted, "Herein!" + +"What do you want?" he demanded, brutally. + +This simplified Burnamy's task, while it made it more loathsome. He +answered not much less brutally, "I want to tell you that I think I used +you badly, that I let you betray yourself, that I feel myself to blame." +He could have added, "Curse you!" without change of tone. + +Stoller sneered in a derision that showed his lower teeth like a dog's +when he snarls. "You want to get back!" + +"No," said Burnamy, mildly, and with increasing sadness as he spoke. "I +don't want to get back. Nothing would induce me. I'm going away on the +first train." + +"Well, you're not!" shouted Stoller. "You've lied me into this--" + +"Look out!" Burnamy turned white. + +"Didn't you lie me into it, if you let me fool myself, as you say?" +Stoller pursued, and Burnamy felt himself weaken through his wrath. +"Well, then, you got to lie me out of it. I been going over the damn +thing, all night--and you can do it for me. I know you can do it," he +gave way in a plea that was almost a whimper. "Look here! You see if you +can't. I'll make it all right with you. I'll pay you whatever you think +is right--whatever you say." + +"Oh!" said Burnamy, in otherwise unutterable disgust. + +"You kin," Stoller went on, breaking down more and more into his adopted +Hoosier, in the stress of his anxiety. "I know you kin, Mr. Burnamy." He +pushed the paper containing his letter into Burnamy's hands, and pointed +out a succession of marked passages. "There! And here! And this place! +Don't you see how you could make out that it meant something else, or was +just ironical?" He went on to prove how the text might be given the +complexion he wished, and Burnamy saw that he had really thought it not +impossibly out. "I can't put it in writing as well as you; but I've done +all the work, and all you've got to do is to give it some of them turns +of yours. I'll cable the fellows in our office to say I've been +misrepresented, and that my correction is coming. We'll get it into shape +here together, and then I'll cable that. I don't care for the money. And +I'll get our counting-room to see this scoundrel"--he picked up the paper +that had had fun with him--"and fix him all right, so that he'll ask for +a suspension of public opinion, and--You see, don't you?" + +The thing did appeal to Burnamy. If it could be done, it would enable him +to make Stoller the reparation he longed to make him more than anything +else in the world. But he heard himself saying, very gently, almost +tenderly, "It might be done, Mr. Stoller. But I couldn't do it. It +wouldn't be honest--for me." + +"Yah!" yelled Stoller, and he crushed the paper into a wad and flung it +into Burnamy's face. "Honest, you damn humbug! You let me in for this, +when you knew I didn't mean it, and now you won't help me out because it +a'n't honest! Get out of my room, and get out quick before I--" + +He hurled himself toward Burnamy, who straightened himself, with "If you +dare!" He knew that he was right in refusing; but he knew that Stoller +was right, too, and that he had not meant the logic of what he had said +in his letter, and of what Burnamy had let him imply. He braved Stoller's +onset, and he left his presence untouched, but feeling as little a moral +hero as he well could. + + + + +XXXVIII. + +General Triscoe woke in the bad humor of an elderly man after a day's +pleasure, and in the self-reproach of a pessimist who has lost his point +of view for a time, and has to work back to it. He began at the belated +breakfast with his daughter when she said, after kissing him gayly, in +the small two-seated bower where they breakfasted at their hotel when +they did not go to the Posthof, "Didn't you have a nice time, yesterday, +papa?" + +She sank into the chair opposite, and beamed at him across the little +iron table, as she lifted the pot to pour out his coffee. + +"What do you call a nice time?" he temporized, not quite able to resist +her gayety. + +"Well, the kind of time I had." + +"Did you get rheumatism from sitting on the grass? I took cold in that +old church, and the tea at that restaurant must have been brewed in a +brass kettle. I suffered all night from it. And that ass from Illinois--" + +"Oh, poor papa! I couldn't go with Mr. Stoller alone, but I might have +gone in the two-spanner with him and let you have Mr. or Mrs. March in +the one-spanner." + +"I don't know. Their interest in each other isn't so interesting to other +people as they seem to think." + +"Do you feel that way really, papa? Don't you like their being so much in +love still?" + +"At their time of life? Thank you it's bad enough in young people." + +The girl did not answer; she appeared altogether occupied in pouring out +her father's coffee. + +He tasted it, and then he drank pretty well all of it; but he said, as he +put his cup down, "I don't know what they make this stuff of. I wish I +had a cup of good, honest American coffee." + +"Oh, there's nothing like American food!" said his daughter, with so much +conciliation that he looked up sharply. + +But whatever he might have been going to say was at least postponed by +the approach of a serving-maid, who brought a note to his daughter. She +blushed a little at sight of it, and then tore it open and read: + +"I am going away from Carlsbad, for a fault of my own which forbids me to +look you in the face. If you wish to know the worst of me, ask Mrs. +March. I have no heart to tell you." + +Agatha read these mystifying words of Burnamy's several times over in a +silent absorption with them which left her father to look after himself, +and he had poured out a second cup of coffee with his own hand, and was +reaching for the bread beside her before she came slowly back to a sense +of his presence. + +"Oh, excuse me, papa," she said, and she gave him the butter. "Here's a +very strange letter from Mr. Burnamy, which I think you'd better see." +She held the note across the table to him, and watched his face as he +read it. + +After he had read it twice, he turned the sheet over, as people do with +letters that puzzle them, in the vain hope of something explanatory on +the back. Then he looked up and asked: "What do you suppose he's been +doing?" + +"I don't believe he's been doing anything. It's something that Mr. +Stoller's been doing to him." + +"I shouldn't infer that from his own words. What makes you think the +trouble is with Stoller?" + +"He said--he said yesterday--something about being glad to be through +with him, because he disliked him so much he was always afraid of +wronging him. And that proves that now Mr. Stoller has made him believe +that he's done wrong, and has worked upon him till he does believe it." + +"It proves nothing of the kind," said the general, recurring to the note. +After reading it again, he looked keenly at her: "Am I to understand that +you have given him the right to suppose you would want to know the +worst--or the best of him?" + +The girl's eyes fell, and she pushed her knife against her plate. She +began: "No--" + +"Then confound his impudence!" the general broke out. "What business has +he to write to you at all about this?" + +"Because he couldn't go away without it!" she returned; and she met her +father's eye courageously. "He had a right to think we were his friends; +and if he has done wrong, or is in disgrace any way, isn't it manly of +him to wish to tell us first himself?" + +Her father could not say that it was not. But he could and did say, very +sceptically: "Stuff! Now, see here, Agatha: what are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to see Mrs. March, and then--" + +"You mustn't do anything of the kind, my dear," said her father, gently. +"You've no right to give yourself away to that romantic old goose." He +put up his hand to interrupt her protest. "This thing has got to be gone +to the bottom of. But you're not to do it. I will see March myself. We +must consider your dignity in this matter--and mine. And you may as well +understand that I'm not going to have any nonsense. It's got to be +managed so that it can't be supposed we're anxious about it, one way or +the other, or that he was authorized to write to you in this way--" + +"No, no! He oughtn't to have done so. He was to blame. He couldn't have +written to you, though, papa--" + +"Well, I don't know why. But that's no reason why we should let it be +understood that he has written to you. I will see March; and I will +manage to see his wife, too. I shall probably find them in the +reading-room at Pupp's, and--" + +The Marches were in fact just coming in from their breakfast at the +Posthof, and he met them at the door of Pupp's, where they all sat down +on one of the iron settees of the piazza, and began to ask one another +questions of their minds about the pleasure of the day before, and to +beat about the bush where Burnamy lurked in their common consciousness. + +Mrs. March was not able to keep long from starting him. "You knew," she +said, "that Mr. Burnamy had left us?" + +"Left! Why?" asked the general. + +She was a woman of resource, but in a case like this she found it best to +trust her husband's poverty of invention. She looked at him, and he +answered for her with a promptness that made her quake at first, but +finally seemed the only thing, if not the best thing: "He's had some +trouble with Stoller." He went on to tell the general just what the +trouble was. + +At the end the general grunted as from an uncertain mind. "You think he's +behaved badly." + +"I think he's behaved foolishly--youthfully. But I can understand how +strongly he was tempted. He could say that he was not authorized to stop +Stoller in his mad career." + +At this Mrs. March put her hand through her husband's arm. + +"I'm not so sure about that," said the general. + +March added: "Since I saw him this morning, I've heard something that +disposes me to look at his performance in a friendlier light. It's +something that Stoller told me himself; to heighten my sense of Burnamy's +wickedness. He seems to have felt that I ought to know what a serpent I +was cherishing in my bosom," and he gave Triscoe the facts of Burnamy's +injurious refusal to help Stoller put a false complexion on the opinions +he had allowed him ignorantly to express. + +The general grunted again. "Of course he had to refuse, and he has +behaved like a gentleman so far. But that doesn't justify him in having +let Stoller get himself into the scrape." + +"No," said March. "It's a tough nut for the casuist to try his tooth on. +And I must say I feel sorry for Stoller." + +Mrs. March plucked her hand from his arm. "I don't, one bit. He was +thoroughly selfish from first to last. He has got just what he deserved." + +"Ah, very likely," said her husband. "The question is about Burnamy's +part in giving him his deserts; he had to leave him to them, of course." + +The general fixed her with the impenetrable glitter of his eye-glasses, +and left the subject as of no concern to him. "I believe," he said, +rising, "I'll have a look at some of your papers," and he went into the +reading-room. + +"Now," said Mrs. March, "he will go home and poison that poor girl's +mind. And, you will have yourself to thank for prejudicing him against +Burnamy." + +"Then why didn't you do it yourself, my dear?" he teased; but he was +really too sorry for the whole affair, which he nevertheless enjoyed as +an ethical problem. + +The general looked so little at the papers that before March went off for +his morning walk he saw him come out of the reading-room and take his way +down the Alte Wiese. He went directly back to his daughter, and reported +Burnamy's behavior with entire exactness. He dwelt upon his making the +best of a bad business in refusing to help Stoller out of it, +dishonorably and mendaciously; but he did not conceal that it was a bad +business. + +"Now, you know all about it," he said at the end, "and I leave the whole +thing to you. If you prefer, you can see Mrs. March. I don't know but I'd +rather you'd satisfy yourself--" + +"I will not see Mrs. March. Do you think I would go back of you in that +way? I am satisfied now." + + + + +XXXIX. + +Instead of Burnamy, Mrs. Adding and her son now breakfasted with the +Marches at the Posthof, and the boy was with March throughout the day a +good deal. He rectified his impressions of life in Carlsbad by March's +greater wisdom and experience, and did his best to anticipate his +opinions and conform to his conclusions. This was not easy, for sometimes +he could not conceal from himself, that March's opinions were whimsical, +and his conclusions fantastic; and he could not always conceal from March +that he was matching them with Kenby's on some points, and suffering from +their divergence. He came to join the sage in his early visit to the +springs, and they walked up and down talking; and they went off together +on long strolls in which Rose was proud to bear him company. He was +patient of the absences from which he was often answered, and he learned +to distinguish between the earnest and the irony of which March's replies +seemed to be mixed. He examined him upon many features of German +civilization, but chiefly upon the treatment of women in it; and upon +this his philosopher was less satisfactory than he could have wished him +to be. He tried to excuse his trifling as an escape from the painful +stress of questions which he found so afflicting himself; but in the +matter of the woman-and-dog teams, this was not easy. March owned that +the notion of their being yokemates was shocking; but he urged that it +was a stage of evolution, and a distinct advance upon the time when women +dragged the carts without the help of the dogs; and that the time might +not be far distant when the dogs would drag the carts without the help of +the women. + +Rose surmised a joke, and he tried to enjoy it, but inwardly he was +troubled by his friend's apparent acceptance of unjust things on their +picturesque side. Once as they were sauntering homeward by the brink of +the turbid Eger, they came to a man lying on the grass with a pipe in his +mouth, and lazily watching from under his fallen lids the cows grazing by +the river-side, while in a field of scraggy wheat a file of women were +reaping a belated harvest with sickles, bending wearily over to clutch +the stems together and cut them with their hooked blades. "Ah, +delightful!" March took off his hat as if to salute the pleasant sight. + +"But don't you think, Mr. March," the boy ventured, "that the man had +better be cutting the wheat, and letting the women watch the cows?" + +"Well, I don't know. There are more of them; and he wouldn't be half so +graceful as they are, with that flow of their garments, and the sway of +their aching backs." The boy smiled sadly, and March put his hand on his +shoulder as they walked on. "You find a lot of things in Europe that need +putting right, don't you, Rose?" + +"Yes; I know it's silly." + +"Well, I'm not sure. But I'm afraid it's useless. You see, these old +customs go such a way back, and are so grounded in conditions. We think +they might be changed, if those who rule could be got to see how cruel +and ugly they are; but probably they couldn't. I'm afraid that the +Emperor of Austria himself couldn't change them, in his sovereign +plenitude of power. The Emperor is only an old custom too, and he's as +much grounded in the conditions as any." This was the serious way Rose +felt that March ought always to talk; and he was too much grieved to +laugh when he went on. "The women have so much of the hard work to do, +over here, because the emperors need the men for their armies. They +couldn't let their men cut wheat unless it was for their officers' +horses, in the field of some peasant whom it would ruin." + +If Mrs. March was by she would not allow him to work these paradoxes for +the boy's confusion. She said the child adored him, and it was a +sacrilege to play with his veneration. She always interfered to save him, +but with so little logic though so much justice that Rose suffered a +humiliation from her championship, and was obliged from a sense of +self-respect to side with the mocker. She understood this, and +magnanimously urged it as another reason why her husband should not +trifle with Rose's ideal of him; to make his mother laugh at him was +wicked. + +"Oh, I'm not his only ideal," March protested. "He adores Kenby too, and +every now and then he brings me to book with a text from Kenby's gospel." + +Mrs. March caught her breath. "Kenby! Do you really think, then, that +she--" + +"Oh, hold on, now! It isn't a question of Mrs. Adding; and I don't say +Rose had an eye on poor old Kenby as a step-father. I merely want you to +understand that I'm the object of a divided worship, and that when I'm +off duty as an ideal I don't see why I shouldn't have the fun of making +Mrs. Adding laugh. You can't pretend she isn't wrapped up in the boy. +You've said that yourself." + +"Yes, she's wrapped up in him; she'd give her life for him; but she is so +light. I didn't suppose she was so light; but it's borne in upon me more +and more." + +They were constantly seeing Rose and his mother, in the sort of abeyance +the Triscoes had fallen into. One afternoon the Addings came to Mrs. +March's room to look from her windows at a parade of bicyclers' clubs +from the neighboring towns. The spectacle prospered through its first +half-hour, with the charm which German sentiment and ingenuity, are able +to lend even a bicycle parade. The wheelmen and wheelwomen filed by on +machines wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and decked with streaming +banners. Here and there one sat under a moving arch of blossoms, or in a +bower of leaves and petals, and they were all gay with their club +costumes and insignia. In the height of the display a sudden mountain +shower gathered and broke upon them. They braved it till it became a +drenching down-pour; then they leaped from their machines and fled to any +shelter they could find, under trees and in doorways. The men used their +greater agility to get the best places, and kept them; the women made no +appeal for them by word or look, but took the rain in the open as if they +expected nothing else. + +Rose watched the scene with a silent intensity which March interpreted. +"There's your chance, Rose. Why don't you go down and rebuke those +fellows?" + +Rose blushed and shrank away without answer, and Mrs. March promptly +attacked her husband in his behalf. "Why don't you go and rebuke them +yourself?" + +"Well, for one thing, there isn't any conversation in my phrase-book +Between an indignant American Herr and a Party of German Wheelmen who +have taken Shelter from the Rain and are keeping the Wheelwomen out in +the Wet." Mrs. Adding shrieked her delight, and he was flattered into +going on. "For another thing, I think it's very well for you ladies to +realize from an object-lesson of this sort what spoiled children of our +civilization you are. It ought to make you grateful for your privileges." + +"There is something in that," Mrs. Adding joyfully consented. + +"Oh, there is no civilization but ours," said Mrs. March, in a burst of +vindictive patriotism. "I am more and more convinced of it the longer I +stay in Europe." + +"Perhaps that's why we like to stay so long in Europe; it strengthens us +in the conviction that America is the only civilized country in the +world," said March. + +The shower passed as quickly as it had gathered, and the band which it +had silenced for a moment burst forth again in the music which fills the +Carlsbad day from dawn till dusk. Just now, it began to play a pot pourri +of American airs; at the end some unseen Americans under the trees below +clapped and cheered. + +"That was opportune of the band," said March. "It must have been a +telepathic impulse from our patriotism in the director. But a pot pourri +of American airs is like that tablet dedicating the American Park up here +on the Schlossberg, which is signed by six Jews and one Irishman. The +only thing in this medley that's the least characteristic or original is +Dixie; and I'm glad the South has brought us back into the Union." + +"You don't know one note from another, my dear," said his wife. + +"I know the 'Washington Post.'" + +"And don't you call that American?" + +"Yes, if Sousa is an American name; I should have thought it was +Portuguese." + +"Now that sounds a little too much like General Triscoe's pessimism," +said Mrs. March; and she added: "But whether we have any national +melodies or not, we don't poke women out in the rain and keep them +soaking!" + +"No, we certainly don't," he assented, with such a well-studied effect of +yielding to superior logic that Mrs. Adding screamed for joy. + +The boy had stolen out of the room, and he said, "I hope Rose isn't +acting on my suggestion?" + +"I hate to have you tease him, dearest," his wife interposed. + +"Oh, no," the mother said, laughing still, but with a note of tenderness +in her laugh, which dropped at last to a sigh. "He's too much afraid of +lese-majesty, for that. But I dare say he couldn't stand the sight. He's +queer." + +"He's beautiful!" said Mrs. March. + +"He's good," the mother admitted. "As good as the day's long. He's never +given me a moment's trouble--but he troubles me. If you can understand!" + +"Oh, I do understand!" Mrs. March returned. "By his innocence, you mean. +That is the worst of children. Their innocence breaks our hearts and +makes us feel ourselves such dreadful old things." + +"His innocence, yes," pursued Mrs. Adding, "and his ideals." She began to +laugh again. "He may have gone off for a season of meditation and prayer +over the misbehavior of these bicyclers. His mind is turning that way a +good deal lately. It's only fair to tell you, Mr. March, that he seems to +be giving up his notion of being an editor. You mustn't be disappointed." + +"I shall be sorry," said the editor. "But now that you mention it, I +think I have noticed that Rose seems rather more indifferent to +periodical literature. I supposed he might simply have exhausted his +questions--or my answers." + +"No; it goes deeper than that. I think it's Europe that's turned his mind +in the direction of reform. At any rate he thinks now he will be a +reformer." + +"Really! What kind of one? Not religious, I hope?" + +"No. His reform has a religious basis, but its objects are social. I +don't make it out, exactly; but I shall, as soon as Rose does. He tells +me everything, and sometimes I don't feel equal to it, spiritually or +even intellectually." + +"Don't laugh at him, Mrs. Adding!" Mrs. March entreated. + +"Oh, he doesn't mind my laughing," said the mother, gayly. Rose came +shyly back into the room, and she said, "Well, did you rebuke those bad +bicyclers?" and she laughed again. + +"They're only a custom, too, Rose,", said March, tenderly. "Like the man +resting while the women worked, and the Emperor, and all the rest of it." + +"Oh, yes, I know," the boy returned. + +"They ride modern machines, but they live in the tenth century. That's +what we're always forgetting when we come to Europe and see these +barbarians enjoying all our up-to-date improvements." + +"There, doesn't that console you?" asked his mother, and she took him away +with her, laughing back from the door. "I don't believe it does, a bit!" + +"I don't believe she understands the child," said Mrs. March. "She is +very light, don't you think? I don't know, after all, whether it wouldn't +be a good thing for her to marry Kenby. She is very easygoing, and she +will be sure to marry somebody." + +She had fallen into a tone of musing censure, and he said, "You might put +these ideas to her." + + + + +XL. + +With the passage of the days and weeks, the strange faces which had +familiarized themselves at the springs disappeared; even some of those +which had become the faces of acquaintance began to go. In the +diminishing crowd the smile of Otterson was no longer to be seen; the +sad, severe visage of Major Eltwin, who seemed never to have quite got +his bearings after his error with General Triscoe, seldom showed itself. +The Triscoes themselves kept out of the Marches' way, or they fancied so; +Mrs. Adding and Rose alone remained of their daily encounter. + +It was full summer, as it is everywhere in mid-August, but at Carlsbad +the sun was so late getting up over the hills that as people went to +their breakfasts at the cafes up the valley of the Tepl they found him +looking very obliquely into it at eight o'clock in the morning. The +yellow leaves were thicker about the feet of the trees, and the grass was +silvery gray with the belated dews. The breakfasters were fewer than they +had been, and there were more little barefooted boys and girls with cups +of red raspberries which they offered to the passers with cries of +"Himbeeren! Himbeeren!" plaintive as the notes of birds left songless by +the receding summer. + +March was forbidden the fruit, but his wife and Mrs. Adding bought +recklessly of it, and ate it under his eyes with their coffee and bread, +pouring over it pots of clotted cream that the 'schone' Lili brought +them. Rose pretended an indifference to it, which his mother betrayed was +a sacrifice in behalf of March's inability. + +Lili's delays in coming to be paid had been such that the Marches now +tried to pay her when she brought their breakfast, but they sometimes +forgot, and then they caught her whenever she came near them. In this +event she liked to coquet with their impatience; she would lean against +their table, and say: "Oh, no. You stay a little. It is so nice." One day +after such an entreaty, she said, "The queen is here, this morning." + +Mrs. March started, in the hope of highhotes. "The queen!" + +"Yes; the young lady. Mr. Burnamy was saying she was a queen. She is +there with her father." She nodded in the direction of a distant corner, +and the Marches knew that she meant Miss Triscoe and the general. "She is +not seeming so gayly as she was being." + +March smiled. "We are none of us so gayly as we were being, Lili. The +summer is going." + +"But Mr. Burnamy will be returning, not true?" the girl asked, resting +her tray on the corner of the table. + +"No, I'm afraid he won't," March returned sadly. + +"He was very good. He was paying the proprietor for the dishes that +Augusta did break when she was falling down. He was paying before he went +away, when he was knowing that the proprietor would make Augusta to pay." + +"Ah!" said March, and his wife said, "That was like him!" and she eagerly +explained to Mrs. Adding how good and great Burnamy had been in this +characteristic instance, while Lili waited with the tray to add some +pathetic facts about Augusta's poverty and gratitude. "I think Miss +Triscoe ought to know it. There goes the wretch, now!" she broke off. +"Don't look at him!" She set her husband the example of averting his face +from the sight of Stoller sullenly pacing up the middle aisle of the +grove, and looking to the right and left for a vacant table. "Ugh! I hope +he won't be able to find a single place." + +Mrs. Adding gave one of her pealing laughs, while Rose watched March's +face with grave sympathy. "He certainly doesn't deserve one. Don't let us +keep you from offering Miss Triscoe any consolation you can." They got +up, and the boy gathered up the gloves, umbrella, and handkerchief which +the ladies let drop from their laps. + +"Have you been telling?" March asked his wife. + +"Have I told you anything?" she demanded of Mrs. Adding in turn. +"Anything that you didn't as good as know, already?" + +"Not a syllable!" Mrs. Adding replied in high delight. "Come, Rose!" + +"Well, I suppose there's no use saying anything," said March, after she +left them. + +"She had guessed everything, without my telling her," said his wife. + +"About Stoller?" + +"Well-no. I did tell her that part, but that was nothing. It was about +Burnamy and Agatha that she knew. She saw it from the first." + +"I should have thought she would have enough to do to look after poor old +Kenby." + +"I'm not sure, after all, that she cares for him. If she doesn't, she +oughtn't to let him write to her. Aren't you going over to speak to the +Triscoes?" + +"No, certainly not. I'm going back to the hotel. There ought to be some +steamer letters this morning. Here we are, worrying about these strangers +all the time, and we never give a thought to our own children on the +other side of the ocean." + +"I worry about them, too," said the mother, fondly. "Though there is +nothing to worry about," she added. + +"It's our duty to worry," he insisted. + +At the hotel the portier gave them four letters. There was one from each +of their children: one very buoyant, not to say boisterous, from the +daughter, celebrating her happiness in her husband, and the loveliness of +Chicago as a summer city ("You would think she was born out there!" +sighed her mother); and one from the son, boasting his well-being in +spite of the heat they were having ("And just think how cool it is here!" +his mother upbraided herself), and the prosperity of 'Every Other Week'. +There was a line from Fulkerson, praising the boy's editorial instinct, +and ironically proposing March's resignation in his favor. + +"I do believe we could stay all winter, just as well as not," said Mrs. +March, proudly. "What does 'Burnamy say?" + +"How do you know it's from him?" + +"Because you've been keeping your hand on it! Give it here." + +"When I've read it." + +The letter was dated at Ansbach, in Germany, and dealt, except for some +messages of affection to Mrs. March, with a scheme for a paper which +Burnamy wished to write on Kaspar Hauser, if March thought he could use +it in 'Every Other Week'. He had come upon a book about that hapless +foundling in Nuremberg, and after looking up all his traces there he had +gone on to Ansbach, where Kaspar Hauser met his death so pathetically. +Burnamy said he could not give any notion of the enchantment of +Nuremberg; but he besought March, if he was going to the Tyrol for his +after-cure, not to fail staying a day or so in the wonderful place. He +thought March would enjoy Ansbach too, in its way. + +"And, not a word--not a syllable--about Miss Triscoe!" cried Mrs. March. +"Shall you take his paper?" + +"It would be serving him right, if I refused it, wouldn't it?" + +They never knew what it cost Burnamy to keep her name out of his letter, +or by what an effort of the will he forbade himself even to tell of his +parting interview with Stoller. He had recovered from his remorse for +letting Stoller give himself away; he was still sorry for that, but he no +longer suffered; yet he had not reached the psychological moment when he +could celebrate his final virtue in the matter. He was glad he had been +able to hold out against the temptation to retrieve himself by another +wrong; but he was humbly glad, and he felt that until happier chance +brought him and his friends together he must leave them to their merciful +conjectures. He was young, and he took the chance, with an aching heart. +If he had been older, he might not have taken it. + + + + +XLI. + +The birthday of the Emperor comes conveniently, in late August, in the +good weather which is pretty sure to fall then, if ever in the Austrian +summer. For a week past, at Carlsbad, the workmen had been building a +scaffolding for the illumination in the woods on a height overlooking the +town, and making unobtrusive preparations at points within it. + +The day was important as the last of March's cure, and its pleasures +began for him by a renewal of his acquaintance in its first kindliness +with the Eltwins. He had met them so seldom that at one time he thought +they must have gone away, but now after his first cup he saw the quiet, +sad old pair, sitting together on a bench in the Stadt Park, and he asked +leave to sit down with them till it was time for the next. Eltwin said +that this was their last day, too; and explained that his wife always +came with him to the springs, while he took the waters. + +"Well," he apologized, "we're all that's left, and I suppose we like to +keep together." He paused, and at the look in March's face he suddenly +went on. "I haven't been well for three or four years; but I always +fought against coming out here, when the doctors wanted me to. I said I +couldn't leave home; and, I don't suppose I ever should. But my home left +me." + +As he spoke his wife shrank tenderly near him, and March saw her steal +her withered hand into his. + +"We'd had a large family, but they'd all died off, with one thing or +another, and here in the spring we lost our last daughter. Seemed +perfectly well, and all at once she died; heart-failure, they called it. +It broke me up, and mother, here, got at me to go. And so we're here." +His voice trembled; and his eyes softened; then they flashed up, and +March heard him add, in a tone that astonished him less when he looked +round and saw General Triscoe advancing toward them, "I don't know what +it is always makes me want to kick that man." + +The general lifted his hat to their group, and hoped that Mrs. Eltwin was +well, and Major Eltwin better. He did not notice their replies, but said +to March, "The ladies are waiting for you in Pupp's readingroom, to go +with them to the Posthof for breakfast." + +"Aren't you going, too?" asked March. + +"No, thank you," said the general, as if it were much finer not; "I shall +breakfast at our pension." He strolled off with the air of a man who has +done more than his duty. + +"I don't suppose I ought to feel that way," said Eltwin, with a remorse +which March suspected a reproachful pressure of his wife's hand had +prompted in him. "I reckon he means well." + +"Well, I don't know," March said, with a candor he could not wholly +excuse. + +On his way to the hotel he fancied mocking his wife for her interest in +the romantic woes of her lovers, in a world where there was such real +pathos as these poor old people's; but in the company of Miss Triscoe he +could not give himself this pleasure. He tried to amuse her on the way +from Pupp's, with the doubt he always felt in passing the Cafe +Sans-Souci, whether he should live to reach the Posthof where he meant to +breakfast. She said, "Poor Mr. March!" and laughed inattentively; when he +went on to philosophize the commonness of the sparse company always +observable at the Sans-Souci as a just effect of its Laodicean situation +between Pupp's and the Posthof, the girl sighed absently, and his wife +frowned at him. + +The flower-woman at the gate of her garden had now only autumnal blooms +for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the +rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance; a +poor remnant of the midsummer multitudes trailed itself along to the +various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like +sere foliage as it moved. + +At the Posthof the 'schone' Lili alone was as gay, as in the prime of +July. She played archly about the guests she welcomed to a table in a +sunny spot in the gallery. "You are tired of Carlsbad?" she said +caressingly to Miss Triscoe, as she put her breakfast before her. + +"Not of the Posthof," said the girl, listlessly. + +"Posthof, and very little Lili?" She showed, with one forefinger on +another, how very little she was. + +Miss Triscoe laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with +abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, +and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have +scolded her, and I have made her give it to me." + +She took from under her apron a man's handkerchief, which she offered to +Mrs. March. It bore, as she saw Miss Triscoe saw, the initials L. J. B. +But, "Whose can it be?" they asked each other. + +"Why, Burnamy's," said March; and Lili's eyes danced. "Give it here!" + +His wife caught it farther away. "No, I'm going to see whose it is, +first; if it's his, I'll send it to him myself." + +She tried to put it into the pocket which was not in her dress by sliding +it down her lap; then she handed it to the girl, who took it with a +careless air, but kept it after a like failure to pocket it. + +Mrs. March had come out in her India-rubber sandals, but for once in +Carlsbad the weather was too dry for them, and she had taken them off and +was holding them in her lap. They fell to the ground when she now rose +from breakfast, and she stooped to pick them up. Miss Triscoe was too +quick for her. + +"Oh, let me carry them for you!" she entreated, and after a tender +struggle she succeed in enslaving herself to them, and went away wearing +them through the heel-bands like manacles on her wrist. She was not the +kind of girl to offer such pretty devotions, and Mrs. March was not the +kind of woman to suffer them; but they played the comedy through, and let +March go off for his last hill-climb with the promise to meet him in the +Stadt Park when he came to the Kurhaus for his last mineral bath. + +Mrs. March in the mean time went about some final shopping, and invited +the girl's advice with a fondness which did not prevent her rejecting it +in every case, with Miss Triscoe's eager approval. In the Stadt Park they +sat down and talked; from time to time Mrs. March made polite feints of +recovering her sandals, but the girl kept them with increased effusion. + +When they rose, and strolled away from the bench where they had been +sitting, they seemed to be followed. They looked round and saw no one +more alarming than a very severe-looking old gentleman, whose hat brim in +spite of his severity was limp with much lifting, as all Austrian hat +brims are. He touched it, and saying haughtily in German, "Something left +lying," passed on. + +They stared at each other; then, as women do, they glanced down at their +skirts to see if there was anything amiss with them, and Miss Triscoe +perceived her hands empty of Mrs. March's sandals and of Burnamy's +handkerchief. + +"Oh, I put it in one of the toes!" she lamented, and she fled back to +their bench, alarming in her course the fears of a gendarme for the +public security, and putting a baby in its nurse's arms into such doubts +of its personal safety that it burst into a desolate cry. She laughed +breathlessly as she rejoined Mrs. March. "That comes of having no pocket; +I didn't suppose I could forget your sandals, Mrs. March! Wasn't it +absurd?" + +"It's one of those things," Mrs. March said to her husband afterwards, +"that they can always laugh over together." + +"They? And what about Burnamy's behavior to Stoller?" + +"Oh, I don't call that anything but what will come right. Of course he +can make it up to him somehow. And I regard his refusal to do wrong when +Stoller wanted him to as quite wiping out the first offence." + +"Well, my dear, you have burnt your ships behind you. My only hope is +that when we leave here tomorrow, her pessimistic papa's poison will +neutralize yours somehow." + + + + +XLII. + +One of the pleasantest incidents of March's sojourn in Carlsbad was his +introduction to the manager of the municipal theatre by a common friend +who explained the editor in such terms to the manager that he conceived +of him as a brother artist. This led to much bowing and smiling from the +manager when the Marches met him in the street, or in their frequent +visits to the theatre, with which March felt that it might well have +ended, and still been far beyond his desert. He had not thought of going +to the opera on the Emperor's birthnight, but after dinner a box came +from the manager, and Mrs. March agreed with him that they could not in +decency accept so great a favor. At the same time she argued that they +could not in decency refuse it, and that to show their sense of the +pleasure done them, they must adorn their box with all the beauty and +distinction possible; in other words, she said they must ask Miss Triscoe +and her father. + +"And why not Major Eltwin and his wife? Or Mrs. Adding and Rose?" + +She begged him, simply in his own interest, not to be foolish; and they +went early, so as to be in their box when their guests came. The foyer of +the theatre was banked with flowers, and against a curtain of evergreens +stood a high-pedestalled bust of the paternal Caesar, with whose +side-whiskers a laurel crown comported itself as well as it could. At the +foot of the grand staircase leading to the boxes the manager stood in +evening dress, receiving his friends and their felicitations upon the +honor which the theatre was sure to do itself on an occasion so august. +The Marches were so cordial in their prophecies that the manager yielded +to an artist's impulse and begged his fellow-artist to do him the +pleasure of coming behind the scenes between the acts of the opera; he +bowed a heart-felt regret to Mrs. March that he could not make the +invitation include her, and hoped that she would not be too lonely while +her husband was gone. + +She explained that they had asked friends, and she should not be alone, +and then he entreated March to bring any gentleman who was his guest with +him. On the way up to their box, she pressed his arm as she used in their +young married days, and asked him if it was not perfect. "I wish we were +going to have it all to ourselves; no one else can appreciate the whole +situation. Do you think we have made a mistake in having the Triscoes?" + +"We!" he retorted. "Oh, that's good! I'm going to shirk him, when it +comes to going behind the scenes." + +"No, no, dearest," she entreated. "Snubbing will only make it worse. We +must stand it to the bitter end, now." + +The curtain rose upon another laurelled bust of the Emperor, with a +chorus of men formed on either side, who broke into the grave and noble +strains of the Austrian Hymn, while every one stood. Then the curtain +fell again, and in the interval before the opera could begin, General +Triscoe and his daughter came in. + +Mrs. March took the splendor in which the girl appeared as a tribute to +her hospitality. She had hitherto been a little disappointed of the open +homage to American girlhood which her readings of international romance +had taught her to expect in Europe, but now her patriotic vanity feasted +full. Fat highhotes of her own sex levelled their lorgnettes at Miss +Triscoe all around the horseshoe, with critical glances which fell +blunted from her complexion and costume; the house was brilliant with the +military uniforms, which we have not yet to mingle with our unrivalled +millinery, and the ardent gaze of the young officers dwelt on the perfect +mould of her girlish arms and neck, and the winning lines of her face. +The girl's eyes shone with a joyful excitement, and her little head, +defined by its dark hair, trembled as she slowly turned it from side to +side, after she removed the airy scarf which had covered it. Her father, +in evening dress, looked the Third Emperor complaisant to a civil +occasion, and took a chair in the front of the box without resistance; +and the ladies disputed which should yield the best place to the other, +till Miss Triscoe forced Mrs. March fondly into it for the first act at +least. + +The piece had to be cut a good deal to give people time for the +illuminations afterwards; but as it was it gave scope to the actress who, +'als Gast' from a Viennese theatre, was the chief figure in it. She +merited the distinction by the art which still lingered, deeply embedded +in her massive balk, but never wholly obscured. + +"That is grand, isn't it?" said March, following one of the tremendous +strokes by which she overcame her physical disadvantages. "It's fine to +see how her art can undo, for one splendid instant, the work of all those +steins of beer, those illimitable licks of sausage, those boundless +fields of cabbage. But it's rather pathetic." + +"It's disgusting," said his wife; and at this General Triscoe, who had +been watching the actress through his lorgnette, said, as if his +contrary-mindedness were irresistibly invoked: + +"Well, I don't know. It's amusing. Do you suppose we shall see her when +we go behind, March?" + +He still professed a desire to do so when the curtain fell, and they +hurried to the rear door of the theatre. It was slightly ajar, and they +pulled it wide open, with the eagerness of their age and nation, and +began to mount the stairs leading up from it between rows of painted +dancing-girls, who had come out for a breath of air, and who pressed +themselves against the walls to make room for the intruders. With their +rouged faces, and the stare of their glassy eyes intensified by the +coloring of their brows and lashes, they were like painted statues, as +they stood there with their crimsoned lips parted in astonished smiles. + +"This is rather weird," said March, faltering at the sight. "I wonder if +we might ask these young ladies where to go?" General Triscoe made no +answer, and was apparently no more prepared than himself to accost the +files of danseuses, when they were themselves accosted by an angry voice +from the head of the stairs with a demand for their business. The voice +belonged to a gendarme, who descended toward them and seemed as deeply +scandalized at their appearance as they could have been at that of the +young ladies. + +March explained, in his ineffective German, with every effect of +improbability, that they were there by appointment of the manager, and +wished to find his room. + +The gendarme would not or could not make anything out of it. He pressed +down upon them, and laying a rude hand on a shoulder of either, began to +force them back to the door. The mild nature of the editor might have +yielded to his violence, but the martial spirit of General Triscoe was +roused. He shrugged the gendarme's hand from his shoulder, and with a +voice as furious as his own required him, in English, to say what the +devil he meant. The gendarme rejoined with equal heat in German; the +general's tone rose in anger; the dancing-girls emitted some little +shrieks of alarm, and fled noisily up the stairs. From time to time March +interposed with a word of the German which had mostly deserted him in his +hour of need; but if it had been a flow of intelligible expostulation, it +would have had no effect upon the disputants. They grew more outrageous, +till the manager himself, appeared at the head of the stairs, and +extended an arresting hand over the hubbub. As soon as the situation +clarified itself he hurried down to his visitors with a polite roar of +apology and rescued them from the gendarme, and led them up to his room +and forced them into arm-chairs with a rapidity of reparation which did +not exhaust itself till he had entreated them with every circumstance of +civility to excuse an incident so mortifying to him. But with all his +haste he lost so much time in this that he had little left to show them +through the theatre, and their presentation to the prima donna was +reduced to the obeisances with which they met and parted as she went upon +the stage at the lifting of the curtain. In the lack of a common language +this was perhaps as well as a longer interview; and nothing could have +been more honorable than their dismissal at the hands of the gendarme who +had received them so stormily. He opened the door for them, and stood +with his fingers to his cap saluting, in the effect of being a whole file +of grenadiers. + + + + +XLIII. + +At the same moment Burnamy bowed himself out of the box where he had been +sitting with the ladies during the absence of the gentlemen. He had +knocked at the door almost as soon as they disappeared, and if he did not +fully share the consternation which his presence caused, he looked so +frightened that Mrs. March reserved the censure which the sight of him +inspired, and in default of other inspiration treated his coming simply +as a surprise. She shook hands with him, and then she asked him to sit +down, and listened to his explanation that he had come back to Carlsbad +to write up the birthnight festivities, on an order from the Paris-New +York Chronicle; that he had seen them in the box and had ventured to took +in. He was pale, and so discomposed that the heart of justice was +softened more and more in Mrs. March's breast, and she left him to the +talk that sprang up, by an admirable effect of tact in the young lady, +between him and Miss Triscoe. + +After all, she decided, there was nothing criminal in his being in +Carlsbad, and possibly in the last analysis there was nothing so very +wicked in his being in her box. One might say that it was not very nice +of him after he had gone away under such a cloud; but on the other hand +it was nice, though in a different way, if he longed so much to see Miss +Triscoe that he could not help coming. It was altogether in his favor +that he was so agitated, though he was momently becoming less agitated; +the young people were beginning to laugh at the notion of Mr. March and +General Triscoe going behind the scenes. Burnamy said he envied them the +chance; and added, not very relevantly, that he had come from Baireuth, +where he had seen the last of the Wagner performances. He said he was +going back to Baireuth, but not to Ansbach again, where he had finished +looking up that Kaspar Hauser business. He seemed to think Mrs. March +would know about it, and she could not help saying; Oh, yes, Mr. March +was so much interested. She wondered if she ought to tell him about his +handkerchief; but she remembered in time that she had left it in Miss +Triscoe's keeping. She wondered if the girl realized how handsome he was. +He was extremely handsome, in his black evening dress, with his Tuxedo, +and the pallor of his face repeated in his expanse of shirt front. + +At the bell for the rising of the curtain he rose too, and took their +offered hands. In offering hers Mrs. March asked if he would not stay and +speak with Mr. March and the general; and now for the first time he +recognized anything clandestine in his visit. He laughed nervously, and +said, "No, thank you!" and shut himself out. + +"We must tell them," said Mrs. March, rather interrogatively, and she was +glad that the girl answered with a note of indignation. + +"Why, certainly, Mrs. March." + +They could not tell them at once, for the second act had begun when March +and the general came back; and after the opera was over and they got out +into the crowded street there was no chance, for the general was obliged +to offer his arm to Mrs. March, while her husband followed with his +daughter. + +The facades of the theatre and of the hotels were outlined with thickly +set little lamps, which beaded the arches of the bridges spanning the +Tepl, and lighted the casements and portals of the shops. High above all, +against the curtain of black woodland on the mountain where its skeleton +had been growing for days, glittered the colossal effigy of the +doubleheaded eagle of Austria, crowned with the tiara of the Holy Roman +Empire; in the reflected splendor of its myriad lamps the pale Christ +looked down from the mountain opposite upon the surging multitudes in the +streets and on the bridges. + +They were most amiable multitudes, March thought, and they responded +docilely to the entreaties of the policemen who stood on the steps of the +bridges, and divided their encountering currents with patient appeals of +"Bitte schon! Bitte schon!" He laughed to think of a New York cop saying +"Please prettily! Please prettily!" to a New York crowd which he wished +to have go this way or that, and then he burned with shame to think how +far our manners were from civilization, wherever our heads and hearts +might be, when he heard a voice at his elbow: + +"A punch with a club would start some of these fellows along quicker." + +It was Stoller, and March turned from him to lose his disgust in the +sudden terror of perceiving that Miss Triscoe was no longer at his side. +Neither could he see his wife and General Triscoe, and he began to push +frantically about in the crowd looking for the girl. He had an +interminable five or ten minutes in his vain search, and he was going to +call out to her by name, when Burnamy saved him from the hopeless +absurdity by elbowing his way to him with Miss. Triscoe on his arm. + +"Here she is, Mr. March," he said, as if there were nothing strange in +his having been there to find her; in fact he had followed them all from +the theatre, and at the moment he saw the party separated, and Miss +Triscoe carried off helpless in the human stream, had plunged in and +rescued her. Before March could formulate any question in his +bewilderment, Burnamy was gone again; the girl offered no explanation for +him, and March had not yet decided to ask any when he caught sight of his +wife and General Triscoe standing tiptoe in a doorway and craning their +necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and his +charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express the +astonishment that filled him, when he was aware of an ominous shining of +her eyes and trembling of her hand on his arm. + +She pressed his arm nervously, and he understood her to beg him to +forbear at once all question of her and all comment on Burnamy's presence +to her father. + +It would not have been just the time for either. Not only Mrs. March was +with the general, but Mrs. Adding also; she had called to them from that +place, where she was safe with Rose when she saw them eddying about in +the crowd. The general was still, expressing a gratitude which became +more pressing the more it was disclaimed; he said casually at sight of +his daughter, "Ah; you've found us, have you?" and went on talking to +Mrs. Adding, who nodded to them laughingly, and asked, "Did you see me +beckoning?" + +"Look here, my dear!" March said to his wife as soon as they parted from +the rest, the general gallantly promising that his daughter and he would +see Mrs. Adding safe to her hotel, and were making their way slowly home +alone. "Did you know that Burnamy was in Carlsbad?" + +"He's going away on the twelve-o'clock train tonight," she answered, +firmly. + +"What has that got to do with it? Where did you see him?" + +"In the box, while you were behind the scenes." + +She told him all about it, and he listened in silent endeavor for the +ground of censure from which a sense of his own guilt forced him. She +asked suddenly, "Where did you see him?" and he told her in turn. + +He added severely, "Her father ought to know. Why didn't you tell him?" + +"Why didn't you?" she retorted with great reason. + +"Because I didn't think he was just in the humor for it." He began to +laugh as he sketched their encounter with the gendarme, but she did not +seem to think it amusing; and he became serious again. "Besides, I was +afraid she was going to blubber, any way." + +"She wouldn't have blubbered, as you call it. I don't know why you need +be so disgusting! It would have given her just the moral support she +needed. Now she will have to tell him herself, and he will blame us. You +ought to have spoken; you could have done it easily and naturally when +you came up with her. You will have yourself to thank for all the trouble +that comes of it, now, my dear." + +He shouted in admiration of her skill in shifting the blame on him. "All +right! I should have had to stand it, even if you hadn't behaved with +angelic wisdom." + +"Why," she said, after reflection, "I don't see what either of us has +done. We didn't get Burnamy to come here, or connive at his presence in +any way." + +"Oh! Make Triscoe believe that! He knows you've done all you could to +help the affair on." + +"Well, what if I have? He began making up to Mrs. Adding himself as soon +as he saw her, to-night. She looked very pretty." + +"Well, thank Heaven! we're off to-morrow morning, and I hope we've seen +the last of them. They've done what they could to spoil my cure, but I'm +not going to have them spoil my aftercure." + + + + +XLIV. + +Mrs. March had decided not to go to the Posthof for breakfast, where they +had already taken a lavish leave of the 'schone' Lili, with a sense of +being promptly superseded in her affections. They found a place in the +red-table-cloth end of the pavilion at Pupp's, and were served by the +pretty girl with the rose-bud mouth whom they had known only as +Ein-und-Zwanzig, and whose promise of "Komm' gleich, bitte schon!" was +like a bird's note. Never had the coffee been so good, the bread so +aerially light, the Westphalian ham so tenderly pink. A young married +couple whom they knew came by, arm in arm, in their morning walk, and sat +down with them, like their own youth, for a moment. + +"If you had told them we were going, dear," said Mrs. March, when the +couple were themselves gone, "we should have been as old as ever. Don't +let us tell anybody, this morning, that we're going. I couldn't bear it." + +They had been obliged to take the secretary of the hotel into their +confidence, in the process of paying their bill. He put on his high hat +and came out to see them off. The portier was already there, standing at +the step of the lordly two-spanner which they had ordered for the long +drive to the station. The Swiss elevator-man came to the door to offer +them a fellow-republican's good wishes for their journey; Herr Pupp +himself appeared at the last moment to hope for their return another +summer. Mrs. March bent a last look of interest upon the proprietor as +their two-spanner whirled away. + +"They say that he is going to be made a count." + +"Well, I don't object," said March. "A man who can feed fourteen thousand +people, mostly Germans, in a day, ought to be made an archduke." + +At the station something happened which touched them even more than these +last attentions of the hotel. They were in their compartment, and were in +the act of possessing themselves of the best places by putting their +bundles and bags on them, when they heard Mrs. March's name called. + +They turned and saw Rose Adding at the door, his thin face flushed with +excitement and his eyes glowing. "I was afraid I shouldn't get here in +time," he panted, and he held up to her a huge bunch of flowers. + +"Why Rose! From your mother?" + +"From me," he said, timidly, and he was slipping out into the corridor, +when she caught him and his flowers to her in one embrace. "I want to +kiss you," she said; and presently, when he had waved his hand to them +from the platform outside, and the train had started, she fumbled for her +handkerchief. "I suppose you call it blubbering; but he is the sweetest +child!" + +"He's about the only one of our Carlsbad compatriots that I'm sorry to +leave behind," March assented. "He's the only unmarried one that wasn't +in danger of turning up a lover on my hands; if there had been some +rather old girl, or some rather light matron in our acquaintance, I'm not +sure that I should have been safe even from Rose. Carlsbad has been an +interruption to our silver wedding journey, my dear; but I hope now that +it will begin again." + +"Yes," said his wife, "now we can have each other all to ourselves." + +"Yes. It's been very different from our first wedding journey in that. It +isn't that we're not so young now as we were, but that we don't seem so +much our own property. We used to be the sole proprietors, and now we +seem to be mere tenants at will, and any interloping lover may come in +and set our dearest interests on the sidewalk. The disadvantage of living +along is that we get too much into the hands of other people." + +"Yes, it is. I shall be glad to be rid of them all, too." + +"I don't know that the drawback is serious enough to make us wish we had +died young--or younger," he suggested. + +"No, I don't know that it is," she assented. She added, from an absence +where he was sufficiently able to locate her meaning, "I hope she'll +write and tell me what her father says and does when she tells him that +he was there." + +There were many things, in the weather, the landscape, their sole +occupancy of an unsmoking compartment, while all the smoking compartments +round overflowed with smokers, which conspired to offer them a pleasing +illusion of the past; it was sometimes so perfect that they almost held +each other's hands. In later life there are such moments when the +youthful emotions come back, as certain birds do in winter, and the +elderly heart chirps and twitters to itself as if it were young. But it +is best to discourage this fondness; and Mrs. March joined her husband in +mocking it, when he made her observe how fit it was that their silver +wedding journey should be resumed as part of his after-cure. If he had +found the fountain of youth in the warm, flat, faintly nauseous water of +the Felsenquelle, he was not going to call himself twenty-eight again +till his second month of the Carlsbad regimen was out, and he had got +back to salad and fruit. + +At Eger they had a memorable dinner, with so much leisure for it that +they could form a life-long friendship for the old English-speaking +waiter who served them, and would not suffer them to hurry themselves. +The hills had already fallen away, and they ran along through a cheerful +country, with tracts of forest under white clouds blowing about in a blue +sky, and gayly flinging their shadows down upon the brown ploughed land, +and upon the yellow oat-fields, where women were cutting the leisurely +harvest with sickles, and where once a great girl with swarthy bare arms +unbent herself from her toil, and rose, a statue of rude vigor and +beauty, to watch them go by. Hedges of evergreen enclosed the yellow +oat-fields, where slow wagons paused to gather the sheaves of the week +before, and then loitered away with them. Flocks of geese waddled in +sculpturesque relief against the close-cropt pastures, herded by little +girls with flaxen pigtails, whose eyes, blue as corn-flowers, followed +the flying train. There were stretches of wild thyme purpling long barren +acreages, and growing up the railroad banks almost to the rails +themselves. From the meadows the rowen, tossed in long loose windrows, +sent into their car a sad autumnal fragrance which mingled with the +tobacco smoke, when two fat smokers emerged into the narrow corridor +outside their compartments and tried to pass each other. Their vast +stomachs beat together in a vain encounter. + +"Zu enge!" said one, and "Ja, zu enge!" said the other, and they laughed +innocently in each other's' faces, with a joy in their recognition of the +corridor's narrowness as great as if it had been a stroke of the finest +wit. + +All the way the land was lovely, and as they drew near Nuremberg it grew +enchanting, with a fairy quaintness. The scenery was Alpine, but the +scale was toy-like, as befitted the region, and the mimic peaks and +valleys with green brooks gushing between them, and strange rock forms +recurring in endless caprice, seemed the home of children's story. All +the gnomes and elves might have dwelt there in peaceful fellowship with +the peasants who ploughed the little fields, and gathered the garlanded +hops, and lived in the farmsteads and village houses with those high +timber-laced gables. + +"We ought to have come here long ago with the children, when they were +children," said March. + +"No," his wife returned; "it would have been too much for them. Nobody +but grown people could bear it." + +The spell which began here was not really broken by anything that +afterwards happened in Nuremberg, though the old toy-capital was +trolley-wired through all its quaintness, and they were lodged in a hotel +lighted by electricity and heated by steam, and equipped with an elevator +which was so modern that it came down with them as well as went up. All +the things that assumed to be of recent structure or invention were as +nothing against the dense past, which overwhelmed them with the sense of +a world elsewhere outlived. In Nuremberg it is not the quaint or the +picturesque that is exceptional; it is the matter-of-fact and the +commonplace. Here, more than anywhere else, you are steeped in the gothic +spirit which expresses itself in a Teutonic dialect of homely sweetness, +of endearing caprice, of rude grotesqueness, but of positive grace and +beauty almost never. It is the architectural speech of a strenuous, +gross, kindly, honest people's fancy; such as it is it was inexhaustible, +and such as it is it was bewitching for the travellers. + +They could hardly wait till they had supper before plunging into the +ancient town, and they took the first tram-car at a venture. It was a +sort of transfer, drawn by horses, which delivered them a little inside. +of the city gate to a trolley-car. The conductor with their fare demanded +their destination; March frankly owned that they did not know where they +wanted to go; they wanted to go anywhere the conductor chose; and the +conductor, after reflection, decided to put them down at the public +garden, which, as one of the newest things in the city, would make the +most favorable impression upon strangers. It was in fact so like all +other city gardens, with the foliage of its trimly planted alleys, that +it sheltered them effectually from the picturesqueness of Nuremberg, and +they had a long, peaceful hour on one of its benches, where they rested +from their journey, and repented their hasty attempt to appropriate the +charm of the city. + +The next morning it rained, according to a custom which the elevator-boy +(flown with the insolent recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said +was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote they +took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. +Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and +shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall +beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or +broad meshes of the shining foliage mantling its blackened masonry. A +tile-roofed open gallery ran along the top, where so many centuries of +sentries had paced, and arched the massive gates with heavily moulded +piers, where so countlessly the fierce burgher troops had sallied forth +against their besiegers, and so often the leaguer hosts had dashed +themselves in assault. The blood shed in forgotten battles would have +flooded the moat where now the grass and flowers grew, or here and there +a peaceful stretch of water stagnated. + +The drive ended in a visit to the old Burg, where the Hapsburg Kaisers +dwelt when they visited their faithful imperial city. From its ramparts +the incredible picturesqueness of Nuremberg best shows itself, and if one +has any love for the distinctive quality of Teutonic architecture it is +here that more than anywhere else one may feast it. The prospect of tower +and spire and gable is of such a mediaeval richness, of such an abounding +fulness, that all incidents are lost in it. The multitudinous roofs of +red-brown tiles, blinking browsily from their low dormers, press upon one +another in endless succession; they cluster together on a rise of ground +and sink away where the street falls, but they nowhere disperse or +scatter, and they end abruptly at the other rim of the city, beyond which +looms the green country, merging in the remoter blue of misty uplands. + +A pretty young girl waited at the door of the tower for the visitors to +gather in sufficient number, and then led them through the terrible +museum, discanting in the same gay voice and with the same smiling air on +all the murderous engines and implements of torture. First in German and +then in English she explained the fearful uses of the Iron Maiden, she +winningly illustrated the action of the racks and wheels on which men had +been stretched and broken, and she sweetly vaunted a sword which had +beheaded eight hundred persons. When she took the established fee from +March she suggested, with a demure glance, "And what more you please for +saying it in English." + +"Can you say it in Russian?" demanded a young man, whose eyes he had seen +dwelling on her from the beginning. She laughed archly, and responded +with some Slavic words, and then delivered her train of sight-seers over +to the custodian who was to show them through the halls and chambers of +the Burg. These were undergoing the repairs which the monuments of the +past are perpetually suffering in the present, and there was some special +painting and varnishing for the reception of the Kaiser, who was coming +to Nuremberg for the military manoeuvres then at hand. But if they had +been in the unmolested discomfort of their unlivable magnificence, their +splendor was such as might well reconcile the witness to the superior +comfort of a private station in our snugger day. The Marches came out +owning that the youth which might once have found the romantic glories of +the place enough was gone from them. But so much of it was left to her +that she wished to make him stop and look at the flirtation which had +blossomed out between that pretty young girl and the Russian, whom they +had scarcely missed from their party in the Burg. He had apparently never +parted from the girl, and now as they sat together on the threshold of +the gloomy tower, he most have been teaching her more Slavic words, for +they were both laughing as if they understood each other perfectly. + +In his security from having the affair in any wise on his hands, March +would have willingly lingered, to see how her education got on; but it +began to rain, The rain did not disturb the lovers, but it obliged the +elderly spectators to take refuge in their carriage; and they drove off +to find the famous Little Goose Man. This is what every one does at +Nuremberg; it would be difficult to say why. When they found the Little +Goose Man, he was only a mediaeval fancy in bronze, who stood on his +pedestal in the market-place and contributed from the bill of the goose +under his arm a small stream to the rainfall drenching the wet wares of +the wet market-women round the fountain, and soaking their cauliflowers +and lettuce, their grapes and pears, their carrots and turnips, to the +watery flavor of all fruits and vegetables in Germany. + +The air was very raw and chill; but after supper the clouds cleared away, +and a pleasant evening tempted the travellers out. The portier dissembled +any slight which their eagerness for the only amusement he could think of +inspired, and directed them to a popular theatre which was giving a +summer season at low prices to the lower classes, and which they +surprised, after some search, trying to hide itself in a sort of back +square. They got the best places at a price which ought to have been +mortifyingly cheap, and found themselves, with a thousand other harmless +bourgeois folk, in a sort of spacious, agreeable barn, of a decoration by +no means ugly, and of a certain artless comfort. Each seat fronted a +shelf at the back of the seat before it, where the spectator could put +his hat; there was a smaller shelf for his stein of the beer passed +constantly throughout the evening; and there was a buffet where he could +stay himself with cold ham and other robust German refreshments. + +It was "The Wedding Journey to Nuremberg" upon which they had oddly +chanced, and they accepted as a national tribute the character of an +American girl in it. She was an American girl of the advanced pattern, +and she came and went at a picnic on the arm of a head waiter. She seemed +to have no office in the drama except to illustrate a German conception +of American girlhood, but even in this simple function she seemed rather +to puzzle the German audience; perhaps because of the occasional English +words which she used. + +To the astonishment of her compatriots, when they came out of the theatre +it was not raining; the night was as brilliantly starlit as a night could +be in Germany, and they sauntered home richly content through the narrow +streets and through the beautiful old Damenthor, beyond which their hotel +lay. How pretty, they said, to call that charming port the Ladies' Gate! +They promised each other to find out why, and they never did so, but +satisfied themselves by assigning it to the exclusive use of the slim +maidens and massive matrons of the old Nuremberg patriciate, whom they +imagined trailing their silken splendors under its arch in perpetual +procession. + + + + +XLV. + +The life of the Nuremberg patriciate, now extinct in the control of the +city which it builded so strenuously and maintained so heroically, is +still insistent in all its art. This expresses their pride at once and +their simplicity with a childish literality. At its best it is never so +good as the good Italian art, whose influence is always present in its +best. The coloring of the great canvases is Venetian, but there is no +such democracy of greatness as in the painting at Venice; in decoration +the art of Nuremberg is at best quaint, and at the worst puerile. +Wherever it had obeyed an academic intention it seemed to March poor and +coarse, as in the bronze fountain beside the Church of St. Lawrence. The +water spins from the pouted breasts of the beautiful figures in streams +that cross and interlace after a fancy trivial and gross; but in the base +of the church there is a time-worn Gethsemane, exquisitely affecting in +its simple-hearted truth. The long ages have made it even more affecting +than the sculptor imagined it; they have blurred the faces and figures in +passing till their features are scarcely distinguishable; and the +sleeping apostles seem to have dreamed themselves back into the +mother-marble. It is of the same tradition and impulse with that supreme +glory of the native sculpture, the ineffable tabernacle of Adam Krafft, +which climbs a column of the church within, a miracle of richly carven +story; and no doubt if there were a Nuremberg sculptor doing great things +today, his work would be of kindred inspiration. + +The descendants of the old patrician who ordered the tabernacle at rather +a hard bargain from the artist still worship on the floor below, and the +descendants of his neighbor patricians have their seats in the pews +about, and their names cut in the proprietary plates on the pew-tops. The +vergeress who showed the Marches through the church was devout in the +praise of these aristocratic fellow-citizens of hers. "So simple, and yet +so noble!" she said. She was a very romantic vergeress, and she told them +at unsparing length the legend of the tabernacle, how the artist fell +asleep in despair of winning his patron's daughter, and saw in a vision +the master-work with the lily-like droop at top, which gained him her +hand. They did not realize till too late that it was all out of a novel +of Georg Ebers's, but added to the regular fee for the church a gift +worthy of an inedited legend. + +Even then they had a pleasure in her enthusiasm rarely imparted by the +Nuremberg manner. They missed there the constant, sweet civility of +Carlsbad, and found themselves falling flat in their endeavors for a +little cordiality. They indeed inspired with some kindness the old woman +who showed them through that cemetery where Albert Durer and Hans Sachs +and many other illustrious citizens lie buried under monumental brasses +of such beauty: + + "That kings to have the like, might wish to die." + +But this must have been because they abandoned themselves so willingly to +the fascination of the bronze skull on the tomb of a fourteenth-century +patrician, which had the uncommon advantage of a lower jaw hinged to the +upper. She proudly clapped it up and down for their astonishment, and +waited, with a toothless smile, to let them discover the bead of a nail +artfully figured in the skull; then she gave a shrill cackle of joy, and +gleefully explained that the wife of this patrician had killed him by +driving a nail into his temple, and had been fitly beheaded for the +murder. + +She cared so much for nothing else in the cemetery, but she consented to +let them wonder at the richness of the sculpture in the level tombs, with +their escutcheons and memorial tablets, overrun by the long grass and the +matted ivy; she even consented to share their indignation at the +destruction of some of the brasses and the theft of others. She suffered +more reluctantly their tenderness for the old, old crucifixion figured in +sculpture at one corner of the cemetery, where the anguish of the Christ +had long since faded into the stone from which it had been evoked, and +the thieves were no longer distinguishable in their penitence or +impenitence; but she parted friends with them when she saw how much they +seemed taken with the votive chapel of the noble Holzschuh family, where +a line of wooden shoes puns upon the name in the frieze, like the line of +dogs which chase one another, with bones in their mouths, around the +Canossa palace at Verona. A sense of the beautiful house by the Adige was +part of the pleasing confusion which possessed them in Nuremberg whenever +they came upon the expression of the gothic spirit common both to the +German and northern Italian art. They knew that it was an effect which +had passed from Germany into Italy, but in the liberal air of the older +land it had come to so much more beauty that now, when they found it in +its home, it seemed something fetched from over the Alps and coarsened in +the attempt to naturalize it to an alien air. + +In the Germanic Museum they fled to the Italian painters from the German +pictures they had inspired; in the great hall of the Rathhaus the noble +Processional of Durer was the more precious, because his Triumph of +Maximilian somehow suggested Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar. There was to +be a banquet in the hall, under the mighty fresco, to welcome the German +Emperor, coming the next week, and the Rathhaus was full of work-people +furbishing it up against his arrival, and making it difficult for the +custodian who had it in charge to show it properly to strangers. She was +of the same enthusiastic sisterhood as the vergeress of St. Lawrence and +the guardian of the old cemetery, and by a mighty effort she prevailed +over the workmen so far as to lead her charges out through the corridor +where the literal conscience of the brothers Kuhn has wrought in the roof +to an exact image of a tournament as it was in Nuremberg four hundred +years ago. In this relief, thronged with men and horses, the gala-life of +the past survives in unexampled fulness; and March blamed himself after +enjoying it for having felt in it that toy-figure quality which seems the +final effect of the German gothicism in sculpture. + + + + +XLVI. + +On Sunday Mrs. March partially conformed to an earlier New England ideal +of the day by ceasing from sight-seeing. She could not have understood +the sermon if she had gone to church, but she appeased the lingering +conscience she had on this point by not going out till afternoon. Then +she found nothing of the gayety which Sunday afternoon wears in Catholic +lands. The people were resting from their week-day labors, but they were +not playing; and the old churches, long since converted to Lutheran uses, +were locked against tourist curiosity. + +It was as it should be; it was as it would be at home; and yet in this +ancient city, where the past was so much alive in the perpetual +picturesqueness, the Marches felt an incongruity in it; and they were +fain to escape from the Protestant silence and seriousness of the streets +to the shade of the public garden they had involuntarily visited the +evening of their arrival. + +On a bench sat a quiet, rather dejected man, whom March asked some +question of their way. He answered in English, and in the parley that +followed they discovered that they were all Americans. The stranger +proved to be an American of the sort commonest in Germany, and he said he +had returned to his native country to get rid of the ague which he had +taken on Staten Island. He had been seventeen years in New York, and now +a talk of Tammany and its chances in the next election, of pulls and +deals, of bosses and heelers, grew up between the civic step-brothers, +and joined them is a common interest. The German-American said he was +bookkeeper in some glass-works which had been closed by our tariff, and +he confessed that he did not mean to return to us, though he spoke of +German affairs with the impartiality of an outsider. He said that the +Socialist party was increasing faster than any other, and that this +tacitly meant the suppression of rank and the abolition of monarchy. He +warned March against the appearance of industrial prosperity in Germany; +beggary was severely repressed, and if poverty was better clad than with +us, it was as hungry and as hopeless in Nuremberg as in New York. The +working classes were kindly and peaceable; they only knifed each other +quietly on Sunday evenings after having too much beer. + +Presently the stranger rose and bowed to the Marches for good-by; and as +he walked down the aisle of trees in which they had been fitting +together, he seemed to be retreating farther and farther from such +Americanism as they had in common. He had reverted to an entirely German +effect of dress and figure; his walk was slow and Teutonic; he must be a +type of thousands who have returned to the fatherland without wishing to +own themselves its children again, and yet out of heart with the only +country left them. + +"He was rather pathetic, my dear," said March, in the discomfort he knew +his wife must be feeling as well as himself. "How odd to have the lid +lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the +witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home! +And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the +mouths of those poor glass-workers!" + +"I thought that was hard," she sighed. "It must have been his bread, +too." + +"Let's hope it was not his cake, anyway. I suppose," he added, dreamily, +"that what we used to like in Italy was the absence of all the modern +activities. The Italians didn't repel us by assuming to be of our epoch +in the presence of their monuments; they knew how to behave as pensive +memories. I wonder if they're still as charming." + +"Oh, no," she returned, "nothing is as charming as it used to be. And now +we need the charm more than ever." + +He laughed at her despair, in the tacit understanding they had lived into +that only one of them was to be desperate at a time, and that they were +to take turns in cheering each other up. "Well, perhaps we don't deserve +it. And I'm not sure that we need it so much as we did when we were +young. We've got tougher; we can stand the cold facts better now. They +made me shiver once, but now they give me a sort of agreeable thrill. +Besides, if, life kept up its pretty illusions, if it insisted upon being +as charming as it used to be, how could we ever bear to die? We've got +that to consider." He yielded to the temptation of his paradox, but he +did not fail altogether of the purpose with which he began, and they took +the trolley back to their hotel cheerful in the intrepid fancy that they +had confronted fate when they had only had the hardihood to face a +phrase. + +They agreed that now he ought really to find out something about the +contemporary life of Nuremberg, and the next morning he went out before +breakfast, and strolled through some of the simpler streets, in the hope +of intimate impressions. The peasant women, serving portions of milk from +house to house out of the cans in the little wagons which they drew +themselves, were a touch of pleasing domestic comedy; a certain effect of +tragedy imparted itself from the lamentations of the sucking-pigs jolted +over the pavements in handcarts; a certain majesty from the long +procession of yellow mail-wagons, with drivers in the royal Bavarian +blue, trooping by in the cold small rain, impassibly dripping from their +glazed hat-brims upon their uniforms. But he could not feel that these +things were any of them very poignantly significant; and he covered his +retreat from the actualities of Nuremberg by visiting the chief +book-store and buying more photographs of the architecture than he +wanted, and more local histories than he should ever read. He made a last +effort for the contemporaneous life by asking the English-speaking clerk +if there were any literary men of distinction living in Nuremberg, and +the clerk said there was not one. + +He went home to breakfast wondering if he should be able to make his +meagre facts serve with his wife; but he found her far from any wish to +listen to them. She was intent upon a pair of young lovers, at a table +near her own, who were so absorbed in each other that they were proof +against an interest that must otherwise have pierced them through. The +bridegroom, as he would have called himself, was a pretty little Bavarian +lieutenant, very dark and regular, and the bride was as pretty and as +little, but delicately blond. Nature had admirably mated them, and if art +had helped to bring them together through the genius of the bride's +mother, who was breakfasting with them, it had wrought almost as fitly. +Mrs. March queried impartially who they were, where they met, and how, +and just when they were going to be married; and March consented, in his +personal immunity from their romance, to let it go on under his eyes +without protest. But later, when they met the lovers in the street, +walking arm in arm, with the bride's mother behind them gloating upon +their bliss, he said the woman ought, at her time of life, to be ashamed +of such folly. She must know that this affair, by nine chances out of +ten, could not fail to eventuate at the best in a marriage as tiresome as +most other marriages, and yet she was abandoning herself with those +ignorant young people to the illusion that it was the finest and sweetest +thing in life. + +"Well, isn't it?" his wife asked. + +"Yes, that's the worst of it. It shows how poverty-stricken life really +is. We want somehow to believe that each pair of lovers will find the +good we have missed, and be as happy as we expected to be." + +"I think we have been happy enough, and that we've had as much good as +was wholesome for us," she returned, hurt. + +"You're always so concrete! I meant us in the abstract. But if you will +be personal, I'll say that you've been as happy as you deserve, and got +more good than you had any right to." + +She laughed with him, and then they laughed again to perceive that they +were walking arm in arm too, like the lovers, whom they were insensibly +following. + +He proposed that while they were in the mood they should go again to the +old cemetery, and see the hinged jaw of the murdered Paumgartner, wagging +in eternal accusation of his murderess. "It's rather hard on her, that he +should be having the last word, that way," he said. "She was a woman, no +matter what mistakes she had committed." + +"That's what I call 'banale'," said Mrs. March. + +"It is, rather," he confessed. "It makes me feel as if I must go to see +the house of Durer, after all." + +"Well, I knew we should have to, sooner or later." + +It was the thing that they had said would not do, in Nuremberg, because +everybody did it; but now they hailed a fiacre, and ordered it driven to +Durer's house, which they found in a remote part of the town near a +stretch of the city wall, varied in its picturesqueness by the +interposition of a dripping grove; it was raining again by the time they +reached it. The quarter had lapsed from earlier dignity, and without +being squalid, it looked worn and hard worked; otherwise it could hardly +have been different in Durer's time. His dwelling, in no way impressive +outside, amidst the environing quaintness, stood at the corner of a +narrow side-hill street that sloped cityward; and within it was stripped +bare of all the furniture of life below-stairs, and above was none the +cozier for the stiff appointment of a show-house. It was cavernous and +cold; but if there had been a fire in the kitchen, and a table laid in +the dining-room, and beds equipped for nightmare, after the German +fashion, in the empty chambers, one could have imagined a kindly, simple, +neighborly existence there. It in no wise suggested the calling of an +artist, perhaps because artists had not begun in Durer's time to take +themselves so objectively as they do now, but it implied the life of a +prosperous citizen, and it expressed the period. + +The Marches wrote their names in the visitors' book, and paid the +visitor's fee, which also bought them tickets in an annual lottery for a +reproduction of one of Durer's pictures; and then they came away, by no +means dissatisfied with his house. By its association with his sojourns +in Italy it recalled visits to other shrines, and they had to own that it +was really no worse than Ariosto's house at Ferrara, or Petrarch's at +Arqua, or Michelangelo's at Florence. "But what I admire," he said, "is +our futility in going to see it. We expected to surprise some quality of +the man left lying about in the house because he lived and died in it; +and because his wife kept him up so close there, and worked him so hard +to save his widow from coming to want." + +"Who said she did that?" + +"A friend of his who hated her. But he had to allow that she was a +God-fearing woman, and had a New England conscience." + +"Well, I dare say Durer was easy-going." + +"Yes; but I don't like her laying her plans to survive him; though women +always do that." + +They were going away the next day, and they sat down that evening to a +final supper in such good-humor with themselves that they were willing to +include a young couple who came to take places at their table, though +they would rather have been alone. They lifted their eyes for their +expected salutation, and recognized Mr. and Mrs. Leffers, of the +Norumbia. + +The ladies fell upon each other as if they had been mother and daughter; +March and the young man shook hands, in the feeling of passengers +mutually endeared by the memories of a pleasant voyage. They arrived at +the fact that Mr. Leffers had received letters in England from his +partners which allowed him to prolong his wedding journey in a tour of +the continent, while their wives were still exclaiming at their encounter +in the same hotel at Nuremberg; and then they all sat down to have, as +the bride said, a real Norumbia time. + +She was one of those young wives who talk always with their eyes +submissively on their husbands, no matter whom they are speaking to; but +she was already unconsciously ruling him in her abeyance. No doubt she +was ruling him for his good; she had a livelier, mind than he, and she +knew more, as the American wives of young American business men always +do, and she was planning wisely for their travels. She recognized her +merit in this devotion with an artless candor, which was typical rather +than personal. March was glad to go out with Leffers for a little stroll, +and to leave Mrs. March to listen to Mrs. Leffers, who did not let them +go without making her husband promise to wrap up well, and not get his +feet wet. She made March promise not to take him far, and to bring him +back early, which he found himself very willing to do, after an exchange +of ideas with Mr. Leffers. The young man began to talk about his wife, in +her providential, her almost miraculous adaptation to the sort of man he +was, and when he had once begun to explain what sort of man he was, there +was no end to it, till they rejoined the ladies in the reading-room. + + + + +XLVII. + +The young couple came to the station to see the Marches off after dinner +the next day; and the wife left a bank of flowers on the seat beside Mrs. +March, who said, as soon as they were gone, "I believe I would rather +meet people of our own age after this. I used to think that you could +keep young by being with young people; but I don't, now. There world is +very different from ours. Our world doesn't really exist any more, but as +long as we keep away from theirs we needn't realize it. Young people," +she went on, "are more practical-minded than we used to be; they're quite +as sentimental; but I don't think they care so much for the higher +things. They're not so much brought up on poetry as we were," she +pursued. "That little Mrs. Leffers would have read Longfellow in our +time; but now she didn't know of his poem on Nuremberg; she was +intelligent enough about the place, but you could see that its quaintness +was not so precious as it was to us; not so sacred." Her tone entreated +him to find more meaning in her words than she had put into them. "They +couldn't have felt as we did about that old ivied wall and that grassy, +flowery moat under it; and the beautiful Damenthor and that pile-up of +the roofs from the Burg; and those winding streets with their Gothic +facades all, cobwebbed with trolley wires; and that yellow, +aguish-looking river drowsing through the town under the windows of those +overhanging houses; and the market-place, and the squares before the +churches, with their queer shops in the nooks and corners round them!" + +"I see what you mean. But do you think it's as sacred to us as it would +have been twenty-five years ago? I had an irreverent feeling now and then +that Nuremberg was overdoing Nuremberg." + +"Oh, yes; so had I. We're that modern, if we're not so young as we were." + +"We were very simple, in those days." + +"Well, if we were simple, we knew it!" + +"Yes; we used to like taking our unconsciousness to pieces and looking at +it." + +"We had a good time." + +"Too good. Sometimes it seems as if it would have lasted longer if it had +not been so good. We might have our cake now if we hadn't eaten it." + +"It would be mouldy, though." + +"I wonder," he said, recurring to the Lefferses; "how we really struck +them." + +"Well, I don't believe they thought we ought to be travelling about +alone, quite, at our age." + +"Oh, not so bad as that!" After a moment he said, "I dare say they don't +go round quarrelling on their wedding journey, as we did." + +"Indeed they do! They had an awful quarrel just before they got to +Nuremberg: about his wanting to send some of the baggage to Liverpool by +express that she wanted to keep with them. But she said it had been a +lesson, and they were never going to quarrel again." The elders looked at +each other in the light of experience, and laughed. "Well," she ended, +"that's one thing we're through with. I suppose we've come to feel more +alike than we used to." + +"Or not to feel at all. How did they settle it about the baggage?" + +"Oh! He insisted on her keeping it with her." March laughed again, but +this time he laughed alone, and after a while she said: "Well, they gave +just the right relief to Nuremberg, with their good, clean American +philistinism. I don't mind their thinking us queer; they must have +thought Nuremberg was queer." + +"Yes. We oldsters are always queer to the young. We're either +ridiculously lively and chirpy, or we're ridiculously stiff and grim; +they never expect to be like us, and wouldn't, for the world. The worst +of it is, we elderly people are absurd to one another; we don't, at the +bottom of our hearts, believe we're like that, when we meet. I suppose +that arrogant old ass of a Triscoe looks upon me as a grinning dotard." + +"I wonder," said Mrs. March, "if she's told him yet," and March perceived +that she was now suddenly far from the mood of philosophic introspection; +but he had no difficulty in following her. + +"She's had time enough. But it was an awkward task Burnamy left to her." + +"Yes, when I think of that, I can hardly forgive him for coming back in +that way. I know she is dead in love with him; but she could only have +accepted him conditionally." + +"Conditionally to his making it all right with Stoller?" + +"Stoller? No! To her father's liking it." + +"Ah, that's quite as hard. What makes you think she accepted him at all?" + +"What do you think she was crying about?" + +"Well, I have supposed that ladies occasionally shed tears of pity. If +she accepted him conditionally she would have to tell her father about +it." Mrs. March gave him a glance of silent contempt, and he hastened to +atone for his stupidity. "Perhaps she's told him on the instalment plan. +She may have begun by confessing that Burnamy had been in Carlsbad. Poor +old fellow, I wish we were going to find him in Ansbach! He could make +things very smooth for us." + +"Well, you needn't flatter yourself that you'll find him in Ansbach. I'm +sure I don't know where he is." + +"You might write to Miss Triscoe and ask." + +"I think I shall wait for Miss Triscoe to write to me," she said, with +dignity. + +"Yes, she certainly owes you that much, after all your suffering for her. +I've asked the banker in Nuremberg to forward our letters to the poste +restante in Ansbach. Isn't it good to see the crows again, after those +ravens around Carlsbad?" + +She joined him in looking at the mild autumnal landscape through the open +window. The afternoon was fair and warm, and in the level fields bodies +of soldiers were at work with picks and spades, getting the ground ready +for the military manoeuvres; they disturbed among the stubble foraging +parties of crows, which rose from time to time with cries of indignant +protest. She said, with a smile for the crows, "Yes. And I'm thankful +that I've got nothing on my conscience, whatever happens," she added in +dismissal of the subject of Burnamy. + +"I'm thankful too, my dear. I'd much rather have things on my own. I'm +more used to that, and I believe I feel less remorse than when you're to +blame." + +They might have been carried near this point by those telepathic +influences which have as yet been so imperfectly studied. It was only +that morning, after the lapse of a week since Burnamy's furtive +reappearance in Carlsbad, that Miss Triscoe spoke to her father about it, +and she had at that moment a longing for support and counsel that might +well have made its mystical appeal to Mrs. March. + +She spoke at last because she could put it off no longer, rather than +because the right time had come. She began as they sat at breakfast. +"Papa, there is something that I have got to tell you. It is something +that you ought to know; but I have put off telling you because--" + +She hesitated for the reason, and "Well!" said her father, looking up at +her from his second cup of coffee. "What is it?" + +Then she answered, "Mr. Burnamy has been here." + +"In Carlsbad? When was he here?" + +"The night of the Emperor's birthday. He came into the box when you were +behind the scenes with Mr. March; afterwards I met him in the crowd." + +"Well?" + +"I thought you ought to know. Mrs. March said I ought to tell you." + +"Did she say you ought to wait a week?" He gave way to an irascibility +which he tried to check, and to ask with indifference, "Why did he come +back?" + +"He was going to write about it for that paper in Paris." The girl had +the effect of gathering her courage up for a bold plunge. She looked +steadily at her father, and added: "He said he came back because he +couldn't help it. He--wished to speak with me, He said he knew he had no +right to suppose I cared anything about what had happened with him and +Mr. Stoller. He wanted to come back and tell me--that." + +Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to leave +the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked at last with +a mildness that seemed to surprise her, "Have you heard anything from him +since?" + +"No." + +"Where is he?" + +"I don't know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must +tell you about it." + +The case was less simple than it would once have been for General +Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for her +happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his own +interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put his +paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with +himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him +without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather +have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very +prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for whom +she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to +extremes concerning him. + +"He was very anxious," she went on, "that you should know just how it +was. He thinks everything of your judgment and--and--opinion." The +general made a consenting noise in his throat. "He said that he did not +wish me to 'whitewash' him to you. He didn't think he had done right; he +didn't excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from the +stand-point of a gentleman." + +The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, "How +do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?" + +"I don't believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March--" + +"Oh, Mrs. March!" the general snorted. + +"--says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burnamy +does." + +"I doubt it. At any rate, I understood March quite differently." + +"She says that he thinks he behaved very nobly afterwards when Mr. +Stoller wanted him to help him put a false complexion on it; that it was +all the more difficult for him to do right then, because of his remorse +for what he had done before." As she spoke on she had become more eager. + +"There's something in that," the general admitted, with a candor that he +made the most of both to himself and to her. "But I should like to know +what Stoller had to say of it all. Is there anything," he inquired, "any +reason why I need be more explicit about it, just now?" + +"N--no. Only, I thought--He thinks so much of your opinion that--if--" + +"Oh, he can very well afford to wait. If he values my opinion so highly +he can give me time to make up my mind." + +"Of course--" + +"And I'm not responsible," the general continued, significantly, "for the +delay altogether. If you had told me this before--Now, I don't know +whether Stoller is still in town." + +He was not behaving openly with her; but she had not behaved openly with +him. She owned that to herself, and she got what comfort she could from +his making the affair a question of what Burnamy had done to Stoller +rather than of what Burnamy had said to her, and what she had answered +him. If she was not perfectly clear as to what she wanted to do, or +wished to have happen, there was now time and place in which she could +delay and make sure. The accepted theory of such matters is that people +know their minds from the beginning, and that they do not change them. +But experience seems to contradict this theory, or else people often act +contrary to their convictions and impulses. If the statistics were +accessible, it might be found that many potential engagements hovered in +a doubtful air, and before they touched the earth in actual promise were +dissipated by the play of meteorological chances. + +When General Triscoe put down his napkin in rising he said that he would +step round to Pupp's and see if Stoller were still there. But on the way +he stepped up to Mrs. Adding's hotel on the hill, and he came back, after +an interval which he seemed not to have found long, to report rather +casually that Stoller had left Carlsbad the day before. By this time the +fact seemed not to concern Agatha herself very vitally. + +He asked if the Marches had left any address with her, and she answered +that they had not. They were going to spend a few days in Nuremberg, and +then push on to Holland for Mr. March's after-cure. There was no +relevance in his question unless it intimated his belief that she was in +confidential correspondence with Mrs. March, and she met this by saying +that she was going to write her in care of their bankers; she asked +whether he wished to send any word. + +"No. I understand," he intimated, "that there is nothing at all in the +nature of a--a--an understanding, then, with--" + +"No, nothing." + +"Hm!" The general waited a moment. Then he ventured, "Do you care to +say--do you wish me to know--how he took it?" + +The tears came into the girl's eyes, but she governed herself to say, +"He--he was disappointed." + +"He had no right to be disappointed." + +It was a question, and she answered: "He thought he had. He said--that he +wouldn't--trouble me any more." + +The general did not ask at once, "And you don't know where he is now--you +haven't heard anything from him since?" + +Agatha flashed through her tears, "Papa!" + +"Oh! I beg your pardon. I think you told me." + + + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Americans are hungrier for royalty than anybody else + Effort to get on common ground with an inferior + He buys my poverty and not my will + Honest selfishness + Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate + Less intrusive than if he had not been there + Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign + Only one of them was to be desperate at a time + Reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last + Voting-cattle whom they bought and sold + We don't seem so much our own property + We get too much into the hands of other people + + + + +THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY + + + +PART III. + + +XLVIII. + +At the first station where the train stopped, a young German bowed +himself into the compartment with the Marches, and so visibly resisted an +impulse to smoke that March begged him to light his cigarette. In the +talk which this friendly overture led to between them he explained that +he was a railway architect, employed by the government on that line of +road, and was travelling officially. March spoke of Nuremberg; he owned +the sort of surfeit he had suffered from its excessive mediaevalism, and +the young man said it was part of the new imperial patriotism to cherish +the Gothic throughout Germany; no other sort of architecture was +permitted in Nuremberg. But they would find enough classicism at Ansbach, +he promised them, and he entered with sympathetic intelligence into their +wish to see this former capital when March told him they were going to +stop there, in hopes of something typical of the old disjointed Germany +of the petty principalities, the little paternal despotisms now extinct. + +As they talked on, partly in German and partly in English, their purpose +in visiting Ansbach appeared to the Marches more meditated than it was. +In fact it was somewhat accidental; Ansbach was near Nuremberg; it was +not much out of the way to Holland. They took more and more credit to +themselves for a reasoned and definite motive, in the light of their +companion's enthusiasm for the place, and its charm began for them with +the drive from the station through streets whose sentiment was both +Italian and French, and where there was a yellowish cast in the gray of +the architecture which was almost Mantuan. They rested their +sensibilities, so bruised and fretted by Gothic angles and points, +against the smooth surfaces of the prevailing classicistic facades of the +houses as they passed, and when they arrived at their hotel, an old +mansion of Versailles type, fronting on a long irregular square planted +with pollard sycamores, they said that it might as well have been Lucca. + +The archway and stairway of the hotel were draped with the Bavarian +colors, and they were obscurely flattered to learn that Prince Leopold, +the brother of the Prince-Regent of the kingdom, had taken rooms there, +on his way to the manoeuvres at Nuremberg, and was momently expected with +his suite. They realized that they were not of the princely party, +however, when they were told that he had sole possession of the +dining-room, and they went out to another hotel, and had their supper in +keeping delightfully native. People seemed to come there to write their +letters and make up their accounts, as well as to eat their suppers; they +called for stationery like characters in old comedy, and the clatter of +crockery and the scratching of pens went on together; and fortune offered +the Marches a delicate reparation for their exclusion from their own +hotel in the cold popular reception of the prince which they got back +just in time to witness. A very small group of people, mostly women and +boys, had gathered to see him arrive, but there was no cheering or any +sign of public interest. Perhaps he personally merited none; he looked a +dull, sad man, with his plain, stubbed features; and after he had mounted +to his apartment, the officers of his staff stood quite across the +landing, and barred the passage of the Americans, ignoring even Mrs. +March's presence, as they talked together. + +"Well, my dear," said her husband, "here you have it at last. This is +what you've been living for, ever since we came to Germany. It's a great +moment." + +"Yes. What are you going to do?" + +"Who? I? Oh, nothing! This is your affair; it's for you to act." + +If she had been young, she might have withered them with a glance; she +doubted now if her dim eyes would have any such power; but she advanced +steadily upon them, and then the officers seemed aware of her, and stood +aside. + +March always insisted that they stood aside apologetically, but she held +as firmly that they stood aside impertinently, or at least indifferently, +and that the insult to her American womanhood was perfectly ideal. It is +true that nothing of the kind happened again during their stay at the +hotel; the prince's officers were afterwards about in the corridors and +on the stairs, but they offered no shadow of obstruction to her going and +coming, and the landlord himself was not so preoccupied with his +highhotes but he had time to express his grief that she had been obliged +to go out for supper. + +They satisfied the passion for the little obsolete capital which had been +growing upon them by strolling past the old Resident at an hour so +favorable for a first impression. It loomed in the gathering dusk even +vaster than it was, and it was really vast enough for the pride of a King +of France, much more a Margrave of Ansbach. Time had blackened and +blotched its coarse limestone walls to one complexion with the statues +swelling and strutting in the figure of Roman legionaries before it, and +standing out against the evening sky along its balustraded roof, and had +softened to the right tint the stretch of half a dozen houses with +mansard roofs and renaissance facades obsequiously in keeping with the +Versailles ideal of a Resident. In the rear, and elsewhere at fit +distance from its courts, a native architecture prevailed; and at no +great remove the Marches found themselves in a simple German town again. +There they stumbled upon a little bookseller's shop blinking in a quiet +corner, and bought three or four guides and small histories of Ansbach, +which they carried home, and studied between drowsing and waking. The +wonderful German syntax seems at its most enigmatical in this sort of +literature, and sometimes they lost themselves in its labyrinths +completely, and only made their way perilously out with the help of +cumulative declensions, past articles and adjectives blindly seeking +their nouns, to long-procrastinated verbs dancing like swamp-fires in the +distance. They emerged a little less ignorant than they went in, and +better qualified than they would otherwise have been for their second +visit to the Schloss, which they paid early the next morning. + +They were so early, indeed, that when they mounted from the great inner +court, much too big for Ansbach, if not for the building, and rung the +custodian's bell, a smiling maid who let them into an ante-room, where +she kept on picking over vegetables for her dinner, said the custodian +was busy, and could not be seen till ten o'clock. She seemed, in her nook +of the pretentious pile, as innocently unconscious of its history as any +hen-sparrow who had built her nest in some coign of its architecture; and +her friendly, peaceful domesticity remained a wholesome human background +to the tragedies and comedies of the past, and held them in a picturesque +relief in which they were alike tolerable and even charming. + +The history of Ansbach strikes its roots in the soil of fable, and above +ground is a gnarled and twisted growth of good and bad from the time of +the Great Charles to the time of the Great Frederick. Between these times +she had her various rulers, ecclesiastical and secular, in various forms +of vassalage to the empire; but for nearly four centuries her sovereignty +was in the hands of the margraves, who reigned in a constantly increasing +splendor till the last sold her outright to the King of Prussia in 1791, +and went to live in England on the proceeds. She had taken her part in +the miseries and glories of the wars that desolated Germany, but after +the Reformation, when she turned from the ancient faith to which she owed +her cloistered origin under St. Gumpertus, her people had peace except +when their last prince sold them to fight the battles of others. It is in +this last transaction that her history, almost in the moment when she +ceased to have a history of her own, links to that of the modern world, +and that it came home to the Marches in their national character; for two +thousand of those poor Ansbach mercenaries were bought up by England and +sent to put down a rebellion in her American colonies. + +Humanly, they were more concerned for the Last Margrave, because of +certain qualities which made him the Best Margrave, in spite of the +defects of his qualities. He was the son of the Wild Margrave, equally +known in the Ansbach annals, who may not have been the Worst Margrave, +but who had certainly a bad trick of putting his subjects to death +without trial, and in cases where there was special haste, with his own +hand. He sent his son to the university at Utrecht because he believed +that the republican influences in Holland would be wholesome for him, and +then he sent him to travel in Italy; but when the boy came home looking +frail and sick, the Wild Margrave charged his official travelling +companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer hanged without +process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his realm, for a +pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he had, at +various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows and bullets or +hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his clemency commuted +to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian who killed his hunting-dog, +he had broken alive on the wheel. A soldier's wife was hanged for +complicity in a case of desertion; a young soldier who eloped with the +girl he loved was brought to Ansbach from a neighboring town, and hanged +with her on the same gallows. A sentry at the door of one of the +Margrave's castles amiably complied with the Margrave's request to let +him take his gun for a moment, on the pretence of wishing to look at it. +For this breach of discipline the prince covered him with abuse and gave +him over to his hussars, who bound him to a horse's tail and dragged him +through the streets; he died of his injuries. The kennel-master who had +charge of the Margrave's dogs was accused of neglecting them: without +further inquiry the Margrave rode to the man's house and shot him down on +his own threshold. A shepherd who met the Margrave on a shying horse did +not get his flock out of the way quickly enough; the Margrave demanded +the pistols of a gentleman in his company, but he answered that they were +not loaded, and the shepherd's life was saved. As they returned home the +gentleman fired them off. "What does that mean?" cried the Margrave, +furiously. "It means, gracious lord, that you will sleep sweeter tonight, +for not having heard my pistols an hour sooner." + +From this it appears that the gracious lord had his moments of regret; +but perhaps it is not altogether strange that when he died, the whole +population "stormed through the streets to meet his funeral train, not in +awe-stricken silence to meditate on the fall of human grandeur, but to +unite in an eager tumult of rejoicing, as if some cruel brigand who had +long held the city in terror were delivered over to them bound and in +chains." For nearly thirty years this blood-stained miscreant had reigned +over his hapless people in a sovereign plenitude of power, which by the +theory of German imperialism in our day is still a divine right. + +They called him the Wild Margrave, in their instinctive revolt from the +belief that any man not untamably savage could be guilty of his +atrocities; and they called his son the Last Margrave, with a touch of +the poetry which perhaps records a regret for their extinction as a +state. He did not harry them as his father had done; his mild rule was +the effect partly of the indifference and distaste for his country bred, +by his long sojourns abroad; but doubtless also it was the effect of a +kindly nature. Even in the matter of selling a few thousands of them to +fight the battles of a bad cause on the other side of the world, he had +the best of motives, and faithfully applied the proceeds to the payment +of the state debt and the embellishment of the capital. + +His mother was a younger sister of Frederick the Great, and was so +constantly at war with her husband that probably she had nothing to do +with the marriage which the Wild Margrave forced upon their son. Love +certainly had nothing to do with it, and the Last Margrave early escaped +from it to the society of Mlle. Clairon, the great French tragedienne, +whom he met in Paris, and whom he persuaded to come and make her home +with him in Ansbach. She lived there seventeen years, and though always +an alien, she bore herself with kindness to all classes, and is still +remembered there by the roll of butter which calls itself a Klarungswecke +in its imperfect French. + +No roll of butter records in faltering accents the name of the brilliant +and disdainful English lady who replaced this poor tragic muse in the +Margrave's heart, though the lady herself lived to be the last Margravine +of Ansbach, where everybody seems to have hated her with a passion which +she doubtless knew how to return. She was the daughter of the Earl of +Berkeley, and the wife of Lord Craven, a sufficiently unfaithful and +unworthy nobleman by her account, from whom she was living apart when the +Margrave asked her to his capital. There she set herself to oust Mlle. +Clairon with sneers and jests for the theatrical style which the actress +could not outlive. Lady Craven said she was sure Clairon's nightcap must +be a crown of gilt paper; and when Clairon threatened to kill herself, +and the Margrave was alarmed, "You forget," said Lady Craven, "that +actresses only stab themselves under their sleeves." + +She drove Clairon from Ansbach, and the great tragedienne returned to +Paris, where she remained true to her false friend, and from time to time +wrote him letters full of magnanimous counsel and generous tenderness. +But she could not have been so good company as Lady Craven, who was a +very gifted person, and knew how to compose songs and sing them, and +write comedies and play them, and who could keep the Margrave amused in +many ways. When his loveless and childless wife died he married the +English woman, but he grew more and more weary of his dull little court +and his dull little country, and after a while, considering the uncertain +tenure sovereigns had of their heads since the French King had lost his, +and the fact that he had no heirs to follow him in his principality, he +resolved to cede it for a certain sum to Prussia. To this end his new +wife's urgence was perhaps not wanting. They went to England, where she +outlived him ten years, and wrote her memoirs. + +The custodian of the Schloss came at last, and the Marches saw instantly +that he was worth waiting for. He was as vainglorious of the palace as +any grand-monarching margrave of them all. He could not have been more +personally superb in showing their different effigies if they had been +his own family portraits, and he would not spare the strangers a single +splendor of the twenty vast, handsome, tiresome, Versailles-like rooms he +led them through. The rooms were fatiguing physically, but so poignantly +interesting that Mrs. March would not have missed, though she perished of +her pleasure, one of the things she saw. She had for once a surfeit of +highhoting in the pictures, the porcelains, the thrones and canopies, the +tapestries, the historical associations with the margraves and their +marriages, with the Great Frederick and the Great Napoleon. The Great +Napoleon's man Bernadotte made the Schloss his headquarters when he +occupied Ansbach after Austerlitz, and here he completed his arrangements +for taking her bargain from Prussia and handing it over to Bavaria, with +whom it still remains. Twice the Great Frederick had sojourned in the +palace; visiting his sister Louise, the wife of the Wild Margrave, and +more than once it had welcomed her next neighbor and sister Wilhelmina, +the Margravine of Baireuth, whose autobiographic voice, piercingly +plaintive and reproachful, seemed to quiver in the air. Here, oddly +enough, the spell of the Wild Margrave weakened in the presence of his +portrait, which signally failed to justify his fame of furious tyrant. +That seems, indeed, to have been rather the popular and historical +conception of him than the impression he made upon his exalted +contemporaries. The Margravine of Baireuth at any rate could so far +excuse her poor blood-stained brother-in-law as to say: "The Margrave of +Ansbach . . . was a young prince who had been very badly educated. He +continually ill-treated my sister; they led the life of cat and dog. My +sister, it is true, was sometimes in fault . . . . Her education had been +very bad. . . She was married at fourteen." + +At parting, the custodian told the Marches that he would easily have +known them for Americans by the handsome fee they gave him; they came +away flown with his praise; and their national vanity was again flattered +when they got out into the principal square of Ansbach. There, in a +bookseller's window, they found among the pamphlets teaching different +languages without a master, one devoted to the Amerikanische Sprache as +distinguished from the Englische Sprache. That there could be no mistake, +the cover was printed with colors in a German ideal of the star-spangled +banner; and March said he always knew that we had a language of our own, +and that now he was going in to buy that pamphlet and find out what it +was like. He asked the young shop-woman how it differed from English, +which she spoke fairly well from having lived eight years in Chicago. She +said that it differed from the English mainly in emphasis and +pronunciation. "For instance, the English say 'HALF past', and the +Americans 'Half PAST'; the English say 'laht' and the Americans say +'late'." + +The weather had now been clear quite long enough, and it was raining +again, a fine, bitter, piercing drizzle. They asked the girl if it always +rained in Ansbach; and she owned that it nearly always did. She said that +sometimes she longed for a little American summer; that it was never +quite warm in Ansbach; and when they had got out into the rain, March +said: "It was very nice to stumble on Chicago in an Ansbach book-store. +You ought to have told her you had a married daughter in Chicago. Don't +miss another such chance." + +"We shall need another bag if we keep on buying books at this rate," said +his wife with tranquil irrelevance; and not to give him time for protest; +she pushed him into a shop where the valises in the window perhaps +suggested her thought. March made haste to forestall her there by saying +they were Americans, but the mistress of the shop seemed to have her +misgivings, and "Born Americans, perhaps?" she ventured. She had probably +never met any but the naturalized sort, and supposed these were the only +sort. March re-assured her, and then she said she had a son living in +Jersey City, and she made March take his address that he might tell him +he had seen his mother; she had apparently no conception what a great way +Jersey City is from New York. + +Mrs. March would not take his arm when they came out. "Now, that is what +I never can get used to in you, Basil, and I've tried to palliate it for +twenty-seven years. You know you won't look up that poor woman's son! Why +did you let her think you would?" + +"How could I tell her I wouldn't? Perhaps I shall." + +"No, no! You never will. I know you're good and kind, and that's why I +can't understand your being so cruel. When we get back, how will you ever +find time to go over to Jersey City?" + +He could not tell, but at last he said: "I'll tell you what! You must +keep me up to it. You know how much you enjoy making me do my duty, and +this will be such a pleasure!" + +She laughed forlornly, but after a moment she took his arm; and he began, +from the example of this good mother, to philosophize the continuous +simplicity and sanity of the people of Ansbach under all their civic +changes. Saints and soldiers, knights and barons, margraves, princes, +kings, emperors, had come and gone, and left their single-hearted, +friendly subjectfolk pretty much what they found them. The people had +suffered and survived through a thousand wars, and apparently prospered +on under all governments and misgovernments. When the court was most +French, most artificial, most vicious, the citizen life must have +remained immutably German, dull, and kind. After all, he said, humanity +seemed everywhere to be pretty safe, and pretty much the same. + +"Yes, that is all very well," she returned, "and you can theorize +interestingly enough; but I'm afraid that poor mother, there, had no more +reality for you than those people in the past. You appreciate her as a +type, and you don't care for her as a human being. You're nothing but a +dreamer, after all. I don't blame you," she went on. "It's your +temperament, and you can't change, now." + +"I may change for the worse," he threatened. "I think I have, already. I +don't believe I could stand up to Dryfoos, now, as I did for poor old +Lindau, when I risked your bread and butter for his. I look back in +wonder and admiration at myself. I've steadily lost touch with life since +then. I'm a trifler, a dilettante, and an amateur of the right and the +good as I used to be when I was young. Oh, I have the grace to be +troubled at times, now, and once I never was. It never occurred to me +then that the world wasn't made to interest me, or at the best to +instruct me, but it does, now, at times." + +She always came to his defence when he accused himself; it was the best +ground he could take with her. "I think you behaved very well with +Burnamy. You did your duty then." + +"Did I? I'm not so sure. At any rate, it's the last time I shall do it. +I've served my term. I think I should tell him that he was all right in +that business with Stoller, if I were to meet him, now." + +"Isn't it strange," she said, provisionally, "that we don't come upon a +trace of him anywhere in Ansbach?" + +"Ah, you've been hoping he would turn up!" + +"Yes. I don't deny it. I feel very unhappy about him." + +"I don't. He's too much like me. He would have been quite capable of +promising that poor woman to look up her son in Jersey City. When I think +of that, I have no patience with Burnamy." + +"I am going to ask the landlord about him, now he's got rid of his +highhotes," said Mrs. March. + + + + +XLIX. + +They went home to their hotel for their midday dinner, and to the comfort +of having it nearly all to themselves. Prince Leopold had risen early, +like all the hard-working potentates of the continent, and got away to +the manoeuvres somewhere at six o'clock; the decorations had been +removed, and the court-yard where the hired coach and pair of the prince +had rolled in the evening before had only a few majestic ducks waddling +about in it and quacking together, indifferent to the presence of a +yellow mail-wagon, on which the driver had been apparently dozing till +the hour of noon should sound. He sat there immovable, but at the last +stroke of the clock he woke up and drove vigorously away to the station. + +The dining-room which they had been kept out of by the prince the night +before was not such as to embitter the sense of their wrong by its +splendor. After all, the tastes of royalty must be simple, if the prince +might have gone to the Schloss and had chosen rather to stay at this +modest hotel; but perhaps the Schloss was reserved for more immediate +royalty than the brothers of prince-regents; and in that case he could +not have done better than dine at the Golden Star. If he paid no more +than two marks, he dined as cheaply as a prince could wish, and as +abundantly. The wine at Ansbach was rather thin and sour, but the bread, +March declared, was the best bread in the whole world, not excepting the +bread of Carlsbad. + +After dinner the Marches had some of the local pastry, not so +incomparable as the bread, with their coffee, which they had served them +in a pavilion of the beautiful garden remaining to the hotel from the +time when it was a patrician mansion. The garden had roses in it and +several sorts of late summer flowers, as well as ripe cherries, currants, +grapes, and a Virginia-creeper red with autumn, all harmoniously +contemporaneous, as they might easily be in a climate where no one of the +seasons can very well know itself from the others. It had not been +raining for half an hour, and the sun was scalding hot, so that the +shelter of their roof was very grateful, and the puddles of the paths +were drying up with the haste which puddles have to make in Germany, +between rains, if they are ever going to dry up at all. + +The landlord came out to see if they were well served, and he was +sincerely obliging in the English he had learned as a waiter in London. +Mrs. March made haste to ask him if a young American of the name of +Burnamy had been staying with him a few weeks before; and she described +Burnamy's beauty and amiability so vividly that the landlord, if he had +been a woman, could not have failed to remember him. But he failed, with +a real grief, apparently, and certainly a real politeness, to recall +either his name or his person. The landlord was an intelligent, +good-looking young fellow; he told them that he was lately married, and +they liked him so much that they were sorry to see him afterwards +privately boxing the ears of the piccolo, the waiter's little understudy. +Perhaps the piccolo deserved it, but they would rather not have witnessed +his punishment; his being in a dress-coat seemed to make it also an +indignity. + +In the late afternoon they went to the cafe in the old Orangery of the +Schloss for a cup of tea, and found themselves in the company of several +Ansbach ladies who had brought their work, in the evident habit of coming +there every afternoon for their coffee and for a dish of gossip. They +were kind, uncomely, motherly-looking bodies; one of them combed her hair +at the table; and they all sat outside of the cafe with their feet on the +borders of the puddles which had not dried up there in the shade of the +building. + +A deep lawn, darkened at its farther edge by the long shadows of trees, +stretched before them with the sunset light on it, and it was all very +quiet and friendly. The tea brought to the Marches was brewed from some +herb apparently of native growth, with bits of what looked like willow +leaves in it, but it was flavored with a clove in each cup, and they sat +contentedly over it and tried to make out what the Ansbach ladies were, +talking about. These had recognized the strangers for Americans, and one +of them explained that Americans spoke the same language as the English +and yet were not quite the same people. + +"She differs from the girl in the book-store," said March, translating to +his wife. "Let us get away before she says that we are not so nice as the +English," and they made off toward the avenue of trees beyond the lawn. + +There were a few people walking up and down in the alley, making the most +of the moment of dry weather. They saluted one another like +acquaintances, and three clean-shaven, walnut-faced old peasants bowed in +response to March's stare, with a self-respectful civility. They were +yeomen of the region of Ansbach, where the country round about is dotted +with their cottages, and not held in vast homeless tracts by the nobles +as in North Germany. + +The Bavarian who had imparted this fact to March at breakfast, not +without a certain tacit pride in it to the disadvantage of the Prussians, +was at the supper table, and was disposed to more talk, which he managed +in a stout, slow English of his own. He said he had never really spoken +English with an English-speaking person before, or at all since he +studied it in school at Munich. + +"I should be afraid to put my school-boy German against your English," +March said, and, when he had understood, the other laughed for pleasure, +and reported the compliment to his wife in their own parlance. "You +Germans certainly beat us in languages." + +"Oh, well," he retaliated, "the Americans beat us in some other things," +and Mrs. March felt that this was but just; she would have liked to +mention a few, but not ungraciously; she and the German lady kept smiling +across the table, and trying detached vocables of their respective +tongues upon each other. + +The Bavarian said he lived in Munich still, but was in Ansbach on an +affair of business; he asked March if he were not going to see the +manoeuvres somewhere. Till now the manoeuvres had merely been the +interesting background of their travel; but now, hearing that the Emperor +of Germany, the King of Saxony, the Regent of Bavaria, and the King of +Wurtemberg, the Grand-Dukes of Weimar and Baden, with visiting potentates +of all sorts, and innumerable lesser highhotes, foreign and domestic, +were to be present, Mrs. March resolved that they must go to at least one +of the reviews. + +"If you go to Frankfort, you can see the King of Italy too," said the +Bavarian, but he owned that they probably could not get into a hotel +there, and he asked why they should not go to Wurzburg, where they could +see all the sovereigns except the King of Italy. + +"Wurzburg? Wurzburg?" March queried of his wife. "Where did we hear of +that place?" + +"Isn't it where Burnamy said Mr. Stoller had left his daughters at +school?" + +"So it is! And is that on the way to the Rhine?" he asked the Bavarian. + +"No, no! Wurzburg is on the Main, about five hours from Ansbach. And it +is a very interesting place. It is where the good wine comes from." + +"Oh, yes," said March, and in their rooms his wife got out all their +guides and maps and began to inform herself and to inform him about +Wurzburg. But first she said it was very cold and he must order some fire +made in the tall German stove in their parlor. The maid who came said +"Gleich," but she did not come back, and about the time they were getting +furious at her neglect, they began getting warm. He put his hand on the +stove and found it hot; then he looked down for a door in the stove where +he might shut a damper; there was no door. + +"Good heavens!" he shouted. "It's like something in a dream," and he ran +to pull the bell for help. + +"No, no! Don't ring! It will make us ridiculous. They'll think Americans +don't know anything. There must be some way of dampening the stove; and +if there isn't, I'd rather suffocate than give myself away." Mrs. March +ran and opened the window, while her husband carefully examined the stove +at every point, and explored the pipe for the damper in vain. "Can't you +find it?" The night wind came in raw and damp, and threatened to blow +their lamp out, and she was obliged to shut the window. + +"Not a sign of it. I will go down and ask the landlord in strict +confidence how they dampen their stoves in Ansbach." + +"Well, if you must. It's getting hotter every moment." She followed him +timorously into the corridor, lit by a hanging lamp, turned low for the +night. + +He looked at his watch; it was eleven o'clock. "I'm afraid they're all in +bed." + +"Yes; you mustn't go! We must try to find out for ourselves. What can +that door be for?" + +It was a low iron door, half the height of a man, in the wall near their +room, and it yielded to his pull. "Get a candle," he whispered, and when +she brought it, he stooped to enter the doorway. + +"Oh, do you think you'd better?" she hesitated. + +"You can come, too, if you're afraid. You've always said you wanted to +die with me." + +"Well. But you go first." + +He disappeared within, and then came back to the doorway. "Just come in +here, a moment." She found herself in a sort of antechamber, half the +height of her own room, and following his gesture she looked down where +in one corner some crouching monster seemed showing its fiery teeth in a +grin of derision. This grin was the damper of their stove, and this was +where the maid had kindled the fire which had been roasting them alive, +and was still joyously chuckling to itself. "I think that Munich man was +wrong. I don't believe we beat the Germans in anything. There isn't a +hotel in the United States where the stoves have no front doors, and +every one of them has the space of a good-sized flat given up to the +convenience of kindling a fire in it." + + + + +L. + +After a red sunset of shameless duplicity March was awakened to a rainy +morning by the clinking of cavalry hoofs on the pavement of the +long-irregular square before the hotel, and he hurried out to see the +passing of the soldiers on their way to the manoeuvres. They were troops +of all arms, but mainly infantry, and as they stumped heavily through the +groups of apathetic citizens in their mud-splashed boots, they took the +steady downpour on their dripping helmets. Some of them were smoking, but +none smiling, except one gay fellow who made a joke to a serving-maid on +the sidewalk. An old officer halted his staff to scold a citizen who had +given him a mistaken direction. The shame of the erring man was great, +and the pride of a fellow-citizen who corrected him was not less, though +the arrogant brute before whom they both cringed used them with equal +scorn; the younger officers listened indifferently round on horseback +behind the glitter of their eyeglasses, and one of them amused himself by +turning the silver bangles on his wrist. + +Then the files of soldier slaves passed on, and March crossed the bridge +spanning the gardens in what had been the city moat, and found his way to +the market-place, under the walls of the old Gothic church of St. +Gumpertus. The market, which spread pretty well over the square, seemed +to be also a fair, with peasants' clothes and local pottery for sale, as +well as fruits and vegetables, and large baskets of flowers, with old +women squatting before them. It was all as picturesque as the markets +used to be in Montreal and Quebec, and in a cloudy memory of his wedding +journey long before, he bought so lavishly of the flowers to carry back +to his wife that a little girl, who saw his arm-load from her window as +he returned, laughed at him, and then drew shyly back. Her laugh reminded +him how many happy children he had seen in Germany, and how freely they +seemed to play everywhere, with no one to make them afraid. When they +grow up the women laugh as little as the men, whose rude toil the +soldiering leaves them to. + +He got home with his flowers, and his wife took them absently, and made +him join her in watching the sight which had fascinated her in the street +under their windows. A slender girl, with a waist as slim as a corseted +officer's, from time to time came out of the house across the way to the +firewood which had been thrown from a wagon upon the sidewalk there. Each +time she embraced several of the heavy four-foot logs and disappeared +with them in-doors. Once she paused from her work to joke with a +well-dressed man who came by; and seemed to find nothing odd in her work; +some gentlemen lounging at the window over head watched her with no +apparent sense of anomaly. + +"What do you think of that?" asked Mrs. March. "I think it's good +exercise for the girl, and I should like to recommend it to those fat +fellows at the window. I suppose she'll saw the wood in the cellar, and +then lug it up stairs, and pile it up in the stoves' dressing-rooms." + +"Don't laugh! It's too disgraceful." + +"Well, I don't know! If you like, I'll offer these gentlemen across the +way your opinion of it in the language of Goethe and Schiller." + +"I wish you'd offer my opinion of them. They've been staring in here with +an opera-glass." + +"Ah, that's a different affair. There isn't much going on in Ansbach, and +they have to make the most of it." + +The lower casements of the houses were furnished with mirrors set at +right angles with them, and nothing which went on in the streets was +lost. Some of the streets were long and straight, and at rare moments +they lay full of sun. At such times the Marches were puzzled by the sight +of citizens carrying open umbrellas, and they wondered if they had +forgotten to put them down, or thought it not worth while in the brief +respites from the rain, or were profiting by such rare occasions to dry +them; and some other sights remained baffling to the last. Once a man +with his hands pinioned before him, and a gendarme marching stolidly +after him with his musket on his shoulder, passed under their windows; +but who he was, or what he, had done, or was to suffer, they never knew. +Another time a pair went by on the way to the railway station: a young +man carrying an umbrella under his arm, and a very decent-looking old +woman lugging a heavy carpet bag, who left them to the lasting question +whether she was the young man's servant in her best clothes, or merely +his mother. + +Women do not do everything in Ansbach, however, the sacristans being men, +as the Marches found when they went to complete their impression of the +courtly past of the city by visiting the funeral chapel of the margraves +in the crypt of St. Johannis Church. In the little ex-margravely capital +there was something of the neighborly interest in the curiosity of +strangers which endears Italian witness. The white-haired street-sweeper +of Ansbach, who willingly left his broom to guide them to the house of +the sacristan, might have been a street-sweeper in Vicenza; and the old +sacristan, when he put his velvet skull-cap out of an upper window and +professed his willingness to show them the chapel, disappointed them by +saying "Gleich!" instead of "Subito!" The architecture of the houses was +a party to the illusion. St. Johannis, like the older church of St. +Gumpertus, is Gothic, with the two unequal towers which seem distinctive +of Ansbach; at the St. Gumpertus end of the place where they both stand +the dwellings are Gothic too, and might be in Hamburg; but at the St. +Johannis end they seem to have felt the exotic spirit of the court, and +are of a sort of Teutonized renaissance. + +The rococo margraves and margravines used of course to worship in St. +Johannis Church. Now they all, such as did not marry abroad, lie in the +crypt of the church, in caskets of bronze and copper and marble, with +draperies of black samite, more and more funereally vainglorious to the +last. Their courtly coffins are ranged in a kind of hemicycle, with the +little coffins of the children that died before they came to the +knowledge of their greatness. On one of these a kneeling figurine in +bronze holds up the effigy of the child within; on another the epitaph +plays tenderly with the fate of a little princess, who died in her first +year. + + In the Rose-month was this sweet Rose taken. + For the Rose-kind hath she earth forsaken. + The Princess is the Rose, that here no longer blows. + From the stem by death's hand rudely shaken. + Then rest in the Rose-house. + Little Princess-Rosebud dear! + There life's Rose shall bloom again + In Heaven's sunshine clear. + +While March struggled to get this into English words, two German ladies, +who had made themselves of his party, passed reverently away and left him +to pay the sacristan alone. + +"That is all right," he said, when he came out. "I think we got the most +value; and they didn't look as if they could afford it so well; though +you never can tell, here. These ladies may be the highest kind of +highhotes practising a praiseworthy economy. I hope the lesson won't be +lost on us. They have saved enough by us for their coffee at the +Orangery. Let us go and have a little willow-leaf tea!" + +The Orangery perpetually lured them by what it had kept of the days when +an Orangery was essential to the self-respect of every sovereign prince, +and of so many private gentlemen. On their way they always passed the +statue of Count Platen, the dull poet whom Heine's hate would have +delivered so cruelly over to an immortality of contempt, but who stands +there near the Schloss in a grass-plot prettily planted with flowers, and +ignores his brilliant enemy in the comfortable durability of bronze; and +there always awaited them in the old pleasaunce the pathos of Kaspar +Hauser's fate; which his murder affixes to it with a red stain. + +After their cups of willow leaves at the cafe they went up into that nook +of the plantation where the simple shaft of church-warden's Gothic +commemorates the assassination on the spot where it befell. Here the +hapless youth, whose mystery will never be fathomed on earth, used to +come for a little respite from his harsh guardian in Ansbach, homesick +for the kindness of his Nuremberg friends; and here his murderer found +him and dealt him the mortal blow. + +March lingered upon the last sad circumstance of the tragedy in which the +wounded boy dragged himself home, to suffer the suspicion and neglect of +his guardian till death attested his good faith beyond cavil. He said +this was the hardest thing to bear in all his story, and that he would +like to have a look into the soul of the dull, unkind wretch who had so +misread his charge. He was going on with an inquiry that pleased him +much, when his wife pulled him abruptly away. + +"Now, I see, you are yielding to the fascination of it, and you are +wanting to take the material from Burnamy!" + +"Oh, well, let him have the material; he will spoil it. And I can always +reject it, if he offers it to 'Every Other Week'." + +"I could believe, after your behavior to that poor woman about her son in +Jersey City, you're really capable of it." + +"What comprehensive inculpation! I had forgotten about that poor woman." + + + + +LI. + +The letters which March had asked his Nuremberg banker to send them came +just as they were leaving Ansbach. The landlord sent them down to the +station, and Mrs. March opened them in the train, and read them first so +that she could prepare him if there were anything annoying in them, as +well as indulge her livelier curiosity. + +"They're from both the children," she said, without waiting for him to +ask. "You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from Mrs. +Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you." Then she hesitated, +with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. "And there's one from +Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of." She delayed again, +and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a sort of +impassioned patience while he read it. + +He read it, and gave it back to her. "There doesn't seem to be very much +in it." + +"That's it! Don't you think I had a right to there being something in it, +after all I did for her?" + +"I always hoped you hadn't done anything for her, but if you have, why +should she give herself away on paper? It's a very proper letter." + +"It's a little too proper, and it's the last I shall have to do with her. +She knew that I should be on pins and needles till I heard how her father +had taken Burnamy's being there, that night, and she doesn't say a word +about it." + +"The general may have had a tantrum that she couldn't describe. Perhaps +she hasn't told him, yet." + +"She would tell him instantly!" cried Mrs. March who began to find reason +in the supposition, as well as comfort for the hurt which the girl's +reticence had given her. "Or if she wouldn't, it would be because she was +waiting for the best chance." + +"That would be like the wise daughter of a difficult father. She may be +waiting for the best chance to say how he took it. No, I'm all for Miss +Triscoe, and I hope that now, if she's taken herself off our hands, +she'll keep off." + +"It's altogether likely that he's made her promise not to tell me +anything about it," Mrs. March mused aloud. + +"That would be unjust to a person who had behaved so discreetly as you +have," said her husband. + +They were on their way to Wurzburg, and at the first station, which was a +junction, a lady mounted to their compartment just before the train began +to move. She was stout and middle-aged, and had never been pretty, but +she bore herself with a kind of authority in spite of her thread gloves, +her dowdy gray travelling-dress, and a hat of lower middle-class English +tastelessness. She took the only seat vacant, a backward-riding place +beside a sleeping passenger who looked like a commercial traveller, but +she seemed ill at ease in it, and March offered her his seat. She +accepted it very promptly, and thanked him for it in the English of a +German, and Mrs. March now classed her as a governess who had been +teaching in England and had acquired the national feeling for dress. But +in this character she found her interesting, and even a little pathetic, +and she made her some overtures of talk which the other met eagerly +enough. They were now running among low hills, not so picturesque as +those between Eger and Nuremberg, but of much the same toylike quaintness +in the villages dropped here and there in their valleys. One small town, +completely walled, with its gray houses and red roofs, showed through the +green of its trees and gardens so like a colored print in a child's +story-book that Mrs. March cried out for joy in it, and then accounted +for her rapture by explaining to the stranger that they were Americans +and had never been in Germany before. The lady was not visibly affected +by the fact, she said casually that she had often been in that little +town, which she named; her uncle had a castle in the country back of it, +and she came with her husband for the shooting in the autumn. By a +natural transition she spoke of her children, for whom she had an English +governess; she said she had never been in England, but had learnt the +language from a governess in her own childhood; and through it all Mrs. +March perceived that she was trying to impress them with her consequence. +To humor her pose, she said they had been looking up the scene of Kaspar +Hauser's death at Ansbach; and at this the stranger launched into such +intimate particulars concerning him, and was so familiar at first hands +with the facts of his life, that Mrs. March let her run on, too much +amused with her pretensions to betray any doubt of her. She wondered if +March were enjoying it all as much, and from time to time she tried to +catch his eye, while the lady talked constantly and rather loudly, +helping herself out with words from them both when her English failed +her. In the safety of her perfect understanding of the case, Mrs. March +now submitted farther, and even suffered some patronage from her, which +in another mood she would have met with a decided snub. + +As they drew in among the broad vine-webbed slopes of the Wurzburg, +hills, the stranger said she was going to change there, and take a train +on to Berlin. Mrs. March wondered whether she would be able to keep up +the comedy to the last; and she had to own that she carried it off very +easily when the friends whom she was expecting did not meet her on the +arrival of their train. She refused March's offers of help, and remained +quietly seated while he got out their wraps and bags. She returned with a +hardy smile the cold leave Mrs. March took of her; and when a porter came +to the door, and forced his way by the Marches, to ask with anxious +servility if she, were the Baroness von-----, she bade the man get them. +a 'traeger', and then come back for her. She waved them a complacent +adieu before they mixed with the crowd and lost sight of her. + +"Well, my dear," said March, addressing the snobbishness in his wife +which he knew to be so wholly impersonal, "you've mingled with one +highhote, anyway. I must say she didn't look it, any more than the Duke +and Duchess of Orleans, and yet she's only a baroness. Think of our being +three hours in the same compartment, and she doing all she could to +impress us and our getting no good of it! I hoped you were feeling her +quality, so that we should have it in the family, anyway, and always know +what it was like. But so far, the highhotes have all been terribly +disappointing." + +He teased on as they followed the traeger with their baggage out of the +station; and in the omnibus on the way to their hotel, he recurred to the +loss they had suffered in the baroness's failure to dramatize her +nobility effectually. "After all, perhaps she was as much disappointed in +us. I don't suppose we looked any more like democrats than she looked +like an aristocrat." + +"But there's a great difference," Mrs. March returned at last. "It isn't +at all a parallel case. We were not real democrats, and she was a real +aristocrat." + +"To be sure. There is that way of looking at it. That's rather novel; I +wish I had thought of that myself. She was certainly more to blame than +we were." + + + + +LII. + +The square in front of the station was planted with flag-poles wreathed +in evergreens; a triumphal arch was nearly finished, and a colossal +allegory in imitation bronze was well on the way to completion, in honor +of the majesties who were coming for the manoeuvres. The streets which +the omnibus passed through to the Swan Inn were draped with the imperial +German and the royal Bavarian colors; and the standards of the visiting +nationalities decked the fronts of the houses where their military +attaches were lodged; but the Marches failed to see our own banner, and +were spared for the moment the ignominy of finding it over an apothecary +shop in a retired avenue. The sun had come out, the sky overhead was of a +smiling blue; and they felt the gala-day glow and thrill in the depths of +their inextinguishable youth. + +The Swan Inn sits on one of the long quays bordering the Main, and its +windows look down upon the bridges and shipping of the river; but the +traveller reaches it by a door in the rear, through an archway into a +back street, where an odor dating back to the foundation of the city is +waiting to welcome him. + +The landlord was there, too, and he greeted the Marches so cordially that +they fully partook his grief in being able to offer them rooms on the +front of the house for two nights only. They reconciled themselves to the +necessity of then turning out for the staff of the King of Saxony, the +more readily because they knew that there was no hope of better things at +any other hotel. + +The rooms which they could have for the time were charming, and they came +down to supper in a glazed gallery looking out on the river picturesque +with craft of all fashions: with row-boats, sail-boats, and little +steamers, but mainly with long black barges built up into houses in the +middle, and defended each by a little nervous German dog. Long rafts of +logs weltered in the sunset red which painted the swift current, and +mantled the immeasurable vineyards of the hills around like the color of +their ripening grapes. Directly in face rose a castled steep, which kept +the ranging walls and the bastions and battlements of the time when such +a stronghold could have defended the city from foes without or from +tumult within. The arches of a stately bridge spanned the river +sunsetward, and lifted a succession of colossal figures against the +crimson sky. + +"I guess we have been wasting our time, my dear," said March, as they, +turned from this beauty to the question of supper. "I wish we had always +been here!" + +Their waiter had put them at a table in a division of the gallery beyond +that which they entered, where some groups of officers were noisily +supping. There was no one in their room but a man whose face was +indistinguishable against the light, and two young girls who glanced at +them with looks at once quelled and defiant, and then after a stare at +the officers in the gallery beyond, whispered together with suppressed +giggling. The man fed on without noticing them, except now and then to +utter a growl that silenced the whispering and giggling for a moment. The +Marches, from no positive evidence of any sense, decided that they were +Americans. + +"I don't know that I feel responsible for them as their +fellow-countryman; I should, once," he said. + +"It isn't that. It's the worry of trying to make out why they are just +what they are," his wife returned. + +The girls drew the man's attention to them and he looked at them for the +first time; then after a sort of hesitation he went on with his supper. +They had only begun theirs when he rose with the two girls, whom Mrs. +March now saw to be of the same size and dressed alike, and came heavily +toward them. + +"I thought you was in Carlsbad," he said bluntly to March, with a nod at +Mrs. March. He added, with a twist of his head toward the two girls, "My +daughters," and then left them to her, while he talked on with her +husband. "Come to see this foolery, I suppose. I'm on my way to the woods +for my after-cure; but I thought I might as well stop and give the girls +a chance; they got a week's vacation, anyway." Stoller glanced at them +with a sort of troubled tenderness in his strong dull face. + +"Oh, yes. I understood they were at school here," said March, and he +heard one of them saying, in a sweet, high pipe to his wife: + +"Ain't it just splendid? I ha'n't seen anything equal to it since the +Worrld's Fairr." She spoke with a strong contortion of the Western r, and +her sister hastened to put in: + +"I don't think it's to be compared with the Worrld's Fairr. But these +German girls, here, just think it's great. It just does me good to laff +at 'em, about it. I like to tell 'em about the electric fountain and the +Courrt of Lionorr when they get to talkin' about the illuminations +they're goun' to have. You goun' out to the parade? You better engage +your carriage right away if you arre. The carrs'll be a perfect jam. +Father's engaged ourrs; he had to pay sixty marrks forr it." + +They chattered on without shyness and on as easy terms with a woman of +three times their years as if she had been a girl of their own age; they +willingly took the whole talk to themselves, and had left her quite +outside of it before Stoller turned to her. + +"I been telling Mr. March here that you better both come to the parade +with us. I guess my twospanner will hold five; or if it won't, we'll make +it. I don't believe there's a carriage left in Wurzburg; and if you go in +the cars, you'll have to walk three or four miles before you get to the +parade-ground. You think it over," he said to March. "Nobody else is +going to have the places, anyway, and you can say yes at the last minute +just as well as now." + +He moved off with his girls, who looked over their shoulders at the +officers as they passed on through the adjoining room. + +"My dear!" cried Mrs. March. "Didn't you suppose he classed us with +Burnamy in that business? Why should he be polite to us?" + +"Perhaps he wants you to chaperon his daughters. He's probably heard of +your performance at the Kurhaus ball. But he knows that I thought Burnamy +in the wrong. This may be Stoller's way of wiping out an obligation. +Wouldn't you like to go with him?" + +"The mere thought of his being in the same town is prostrating. I'd far +rather he hated us; then he would avoid us." + +"Well, he doesn't own the town, and if it comes to the worst, perhaps we +can avoid him. Let us go out, anyway, and see if we can't." + +"No, no; I'm too tired; but you go. And get all the maps and guides you +can; there's so very little in Baedeker, and almost nothing in that great +hulking Bradshaw of yours; and I'm sure there must be the most +interesting history of Wurzburg. Isn't it strange that we haven't the +slightest association with the name?" + +"I've been rummaging in my mind, and I've got hold of an association at +last," said March. "It's beer; a sign in a Sixth Avenue saloon window +Wurzburger Hof-Brau." + +"No matter if it is beer. Find some sketch of the history, and we'll try +to get away from the Stollers in it. I pitied those wild girls, too. What +crazy images of the world must fill their empty minds! How their ignorant +thoughts must go whirling out into the unknown! I don't envy their +father. Do hurry back! I shall be thinking about them every instant till +you come." + +She said this, but in their own rooms it was so soothing to sit looking +through the long twilight at the lovely landscape that the sort of bruise +given by their encounter with the Stollers had left her consciousness +before March returned. She made him admire first the convent church on a +hill further up the river which exactly balanced the fortress in front of +them, and then she seized upon the little books he had brought, and set +him to exploring the labyrinths of their German, with a mounting +exultation in his discoveries. There was a general guide to the city, and +a special guide, with plans and personal details of the approaching +manoeuvres and the princes who were to figure in them; and there was a +sketch of the local history: a kind of thing that the Germans know how to +write particularly, well, with little gleams of pleasant humor blinking +through it. For the study of this, Mrs. March realized, more and more +passionately, that they were in the very most central and convenient +point, for the history of Wurzburg might be said to have begun with her +prince-bishops, whose rule had begun in the twelfth century, and who had +built, on a forgotten Roman work, the fortress of the Marienburg on that +vineyarded hill over against the Swan Inn. There had of course been +history before that, but 'nothing so clear, nothing so peculiarly swell, +nothing that so united the glory of this world and the next as that of +the prince-bishops. They had made the Marienburg their home, and kept it +against foreign and domestic foes for five hundred years. Shut within its +well-armed walls they had awed the often-turbulent city across the Main; +they had held it against the embattled farmers in the Peasants' War, and +had splendidly lost it to Gustavus Adolphus, and then got it back again +and held it till Napoleon took it from them. He gave it with their flock +to the Bavarians, who in turn briefly yielded it to the Prussians in +1866, and were now in apparently final possession of it. + +Before the prince-bishops, Charlemagne and Barbarossa had come and gone, +and since the prince-bishops there had been visiting thrones and kingdoms +enough in the ancient city, which was soon to be illustrated by the +presence of imperial Germany, royal, Wirtemberg and Saxony, grand-ducal +Baden and Weimar, and a surfeit of all the minor potentates among those +who speak the beautiful language of the Ja. + +But none of these could dislodge the prince-bishops from that supreme +place which they had at once taken in Mrs. March's fancy. The potentates +were all going to be housed in the vast palace which the prince-bishops +had built themselves in Wurzburg as soon as they found it safe to come +down from their stronghold of Marienburg, and begin to adorn their city, +and to confirm it in its intense fidelity to the Church. Tiepolo had come +up out of Italy to fresco their palace, where he wrought year after year, +in that worldly taste which has somehow come to express the most +sovereign moment of ecclesiasticism. It prevailed so universally in +Wurzburg that it left her with the name of the Rococo City, intrenched in +a period of time equally remote from early Christianity and modern +Protestantism. Out of her sixty thousand souls, only ten thousand are now +of the reformed religion, and these bear about the same relation to the +Catholic spirit of the place that the Gothic architecture bears to the +baroque. + +As long as the prince-bishops lasted the Wurzburgers got on very well +with but one newspaper, and perhaps the smallest amount of merrymaking +known outside of the colony of Massachusetts Bay at the same epoch. The +prince-bishops had their finger in everybody's pie, and they portioned +out the cakes and ale, which were made according to formulas of their +own. The distractions were all of a religious character; churches, +convents, monasteries, abounded; ecclesiastical processions and +solemnities were the spectacles that edified if they did not amuse the +devout population. + +It seemed to March an ironical outcome of all this spiritual severity +that one of the greatest modern scientific discoveries should have been +made in Wurzburg, and that the Roentgen rays should now be giving her +name a splendor destined to eclipse the glories of her past. + +Mrs. March could not allow that they would do so; or at least that the +name of Roentgen would ever lend more lustre to his city than that of +Longfellow's Walther von der Vogelweide. She was no less surprised than +pleased to realize that this friend of the birds was a Wurzburger, and +she said that their first pilgrimage in the morning should be to the +church where he lies buried. + + + + +LIII. + +March went down to breakfast not quite so early as his wife had planned, +and left her to have her coffee in her room. He got a pleasant table in +the gallery overlooking the river, and he decided that the landscape, +though it now seemed to be rather too much studied from a drop-certain, +had certainly lost nothing of its charm in the clear morning light. The +waiter brought his breakfast, and after a little delay came back with a +card which he insisted was for March. It was not till he put on his +glasses and read the name of Mr. R. M. Kenby that he was able at all to +agree with the waiter, who stood passive at his elbow. + +"Well," he said, "why wasn't this card sent up last night?" + +The waiter explained that the gentleman had just, given him his card, +after asking March's nationality, and was then breakfasting in the next +room. March caught up his napkin and ran round the partition wall, and +Kenby rose with his napkin and hurried to meet him. + +"I thought it must be you," he called out, joyfully, as they struck their +extended hands together, "but so many people look alike, nowadays, that I +don't trust my eyes any more." + +Kenby said he had spent the time since they last met partly in Leipsic +and partly in Gotha, where he had amused himself in rubbing up his rusty +German. As soon as he realized that Wurzburg was so near he had slipped +down from Gotha for a glimpse of the manoeuvres. He added that he +supposed March was there to see them, and he asked with a quite +unembarrassed smile if they had met Mr. Adding in Carlsbad, and without +heeding March's answer, he laughed and added: "Of course, I know she must +have told Mrs. March all about it." + +March could not deny this; he laughed, too; though in his wife's absence +he felt bound to forbid himself anything more explicit. + +"I don't give it up, you know," Kenby went on, with perfect ease. "I'm +not a young fellow, if you call thirty-nine old." + +"At my age I don't," March put in, and they roared together, in men's +security from the encroachments of time. + +"But she happens to be the only woman I've ever really wanted to marry, +for more than a few days at a stretch. You know how it is with us." + +"Oh, yes, I know," said March, and they shouted again. + +"We're in love, and we're out of love, twenty times. But this isn't a +mere fancy; it's a conviction. And there's no reason why she shouldn't +marry me." + +March smiled gravely, and his smile was not lost upon Kenby. "You mean +the boy," he said. "Well, I like Rose," and now March really felt swept +from his feet. "She doesn't deny that she likes me, but she seems to +think that her marrying again will take her from him; the fact is, it +will only give me to him. As for devoting her whole life to him, she +couldn't do a worse thing for him. What the boy needs is a man's care, +and a man's will--Good heavens! You don't think I could ever be unkind to +the little soul?" Kenby threw himself forward over the table. + +"My dear fellow!" March protested. + +"I'd rather cut off my right hand!" Kenby pursued, excitedly, and then he +said, with a humorous drop: "The fact is, I don't believe I should want +her so much if I couldn't have Rose too. I want to have them both. So +far, I've only got no for an answer; but I'm not going to keep it. I had +a letter from Rose at Carlsbad, the other day; and--" + +The waiter came forward with a folded scrap of paper on his salver, which +March knew must be from his wife. "What is keeping you so?" she wrote. "I +am all ready." "It's from Mrs. March," he explained to Kenby. "I am going +out with her on some errands. I'm awfully glad to see you again. We must +talk it all over, and you must--you mustn't--Mrs. March will want to see +you later--I--Are you in the hotel?" + +"Oh yes. I'll see you at the one-o'clock table d'hote, I suppose." + +March went away with his head whirling in the question whether he should +tell his wife at once of Kenby's presence, or leave her free for the +pleasures of Wurzburg, till he could shape the fact into some safe and +acceptable form. She met him at the door with her guide-books, wraps and +umbrellas, and would hardly give him time to get on his hat and coat. + +"Now, I want you to avoid the Stollers as far as you can see them. This +is to be a real wedding-journey day, with no extraneous acquaintance to +bother; the more strangers the better. Wurzburg is richer than anything I +imagined. I've looked it all up; I've got the plan of the city, so that +we can easily find the way. We'll walk first, and take carriages whenever +we get tired. We'll go to the cathedral at once; I want a good gulp of +rococo to begin with; there wasn't half enough of it at Ansbach. Isn't it +strange how we've come round to it?" + +She referred to that passion for the Gothic which they had obediently +imbibed from Ruskin in the days of their early Italian travel and +courtship, when all the English-speaking world bowed down to him in +devout aversion from the renaissance, and pious abhorrence of the rococo. + +"What biddable little things we were!" she went on, while March was +struggling to keep Kenby in the background of his consciousness. "The +rococo must have always had a sneaking charm for us, when we were pinning +our faith to pointed arches; and yet I suppose we were perfectly sincere. +Oh, look at that divinely ridiculous Madonna!" They were now making their +way out of the crooked footway behind their hotel toward the street +leading to the cathedral, and she pointed to the Blessed Virgin over the +door of some religious house, her drapery billowing about her feet; her +body twisting to show the sculptor's mastery of anatomy, and the halo +held on her tossing head with the help of stout gilt rays. In fact, the +Virgin's whole figure was gilded, and so was that of the child in her +arms. "Isn't she delightful?" + +"I see what you mean," said March, with a dubious glance at the statue, +"but I'm not sure, now, that I wouldn't like something quieter in my +Madonnas." + +The thoroughfare which they emerged upon, with the cathedral ending the +prospective, was full of the holiday so near at hand. The narrow +sidewalks were thronged with people, both soldiers and civilians, and up +the middle of the street detachments of military came and went, halting +the little horse-cars and the huge beer-wagons which otherwise seemed to +have the sole right to the streets of Wurzburg; they came jingling or +thundering out of the aide streets and hurled themselves round the +corners reckless of the passers, who escaped alive by flattening +themselves like posters against the house walls. There were peasants, men +and women, in the costume which the unbroken course of their country life +had kept as quaint as it was a hundred years before; there were citizens +in the misfits of the latest German fashions; there were soldiers of all +arms in their vivid uniforms, and from time to time there were pretty +young girls in white dresses with low necks, and bare arms gloved to the +elbows, who were following a holiday custom of the place in going about +the streets in ball costume. The shop windows were filled with portraits +of the Emperor and the Empress, and the Prince-Regent and the ladies of +his family; the German and Bavarian colors draped the facades of the +houses and festooned the fantastic Madonnas posing above so many portals. +The modern patriotism included the ancient piety without disturbing it; +the rococo city remained ecclesiastical through its new imperialism, and +kept the stamp given it by the long rule of the prince-bishops under the +sovereignty of its King and the suzerainty of its Kaiser. + +The Marches escaped from the present, when they entered the cathedral, as +wholly as if they had taken hold of the horns of the altar, though they +were far from literally doing this in an interior so grandiose. There +area few rococo churches in Italy, and perhaps more in Spain, which +approach the perfection achieved by the Wurzburg cathedral in the baroque +style. For once one sees what that style can do in architecture and +sculpture, and whatever one may say of the details, one cannot deny that +there is a prodigiously effective keeping in it all. This interior came +together, as the decorators say, with a harmony that the travellers had +felt nowhere in their earlier experience of the rococo. It was, +unimpeachably perfect in its way, "Just," March murmured to his wife, "as +the social and political and scientific scheme of the eighteenth century +was perfected in certain times and places. But the odd thing is to find +the apotheosis of the rococo away up here in Germany. I wonder how much +the prince-bishops really liked it. But they had become rococo, too! Look +at that row of their statues on both sides of the nave! What magnificent +swell! How they abash this poor plain Christ, here; he would like to get +behind the pillar; he knows that he could never lend himself to the +baroque style. It expresses the eighteenth century, though. But how you +long for some little hint of the thirteenth, or even the nineteenth." + +"I don't," she whispered back. "I'm perfectly wild with Wurzburg. I like +to have a thing go as far as it can. At Nuremberg I wanted all the Gothic +I could get, and in Wurzburg I want all the baroque I can get. I am +consistent." + +She kept on praising herself to his disadvantage, as women do, all the +way to the Neumunster Church, where they were going to revere the tomb of +Walther von der Vogelweide, not so much for his own sake as for +Longfellow's. The older poet lies buried within, but his monument is +outside the church, perhaps for the greater convenience of the sparrows, +which now represent the birds he loved. The cenotaph is surmounted by a +broad vase, and around this are thickly perched the effigies of the +Meistersinger's feathered friends, from whom the canons of the church, as +Mrs. March read aloud from her Baedeker, long ago directed his bequest to +themselves. In revenge for their lawless greed the defrauded +beneficiaries choose to burlesque the affair by looking like the +four-and-twenty blackbirds when the pie was opened. + +She consented to go for a moment to the Gothic Marienkapelle with her +husband in the revival of his mediaeval taste, and she was rewarded +amidst its thirteenth-century sincerity by his recantation. "You are +right! Baroque is the thing for Wurzburg; one can't enjoy Gothic here any +more than one could enjoy baroque in Nuremberg." + +Reconciled in the rococo, they now called a carriage, and went to visit +the palace of the prince-bishops who had so well known how to make the +heavenly take the image and superscription of the worldly; and they were +jointly indignant to find it shut against the public in preparation for +the imperialities and royalties coming to occupy it. They were in time +for the noon guard-mounting, however, and Mrs. March said that the way +the retiring squad kicked their legs out in the high martial step of the +German soldiers was a perfect expression of the insolent militarism of +their empire, and was of itself enough to make one thank Heaven that one +was an American and a republican. She softened a little toward their +system when it proved that the garden of the palace was still open, and +yet more when she sank down upon a bench between two marble groups +representing the Rape of Proserpine and the Rape of Europa. They stood +each in a gravelled plot, thickly overrun by a growth of ivy, and the +vine climbed the white naked limbs of the nymphs, who were present on a +pretence of gathering flowers, but really to pose at the spectators, and +clad them to the waist and shoulders with an effect of modesty never +meant by the sculptor, but not displeasing. There was an old fountain +near, its stone rim and centre of rock-work green with immemorial mould, +and its basin quivering between its water-plants under the soft fall of +spray. At a waft of fitful breeze some leaves of early autumn fell from +the trees overhead upon the elderly pair where they sat, and a little +company of sparrows came and hopped about their feet. Though the square +without was so all astir with festive expectation, there were few people +in the garden; three or four peasant women in densely fluted white skirts +and red aprons and shawls wandered by and stared at the Europa and at the +Proserpine. + +It was a precious moment in which the charm of the city's past seemed to +culminate, and they were loath to break it by speech. + +"Why didn't we have something like all this on our first wedding +journey?" she sighed at last. "To think of our battening from Boston to +Niagara and back! And how hard we tried to make something of Rochester +and Buffalo, of Montreal and Quebec!" + +"Niagara wasn't so bad," he said, "and I will never go back on Quebec." + +"Ah, but if we could have had Hamburg and Leipsic, and Carlsbad and +Nuremberg, and Ansbach and Wurzburg! Perhaps this is meant as a +compensation for our lost youth. But I can't enjoy it as I could when I +was young. It's wasted on my sere and yellow leaf. I wish Burnamy and +Miss Triscoe were here; I should like to try this garden on them." + +"They wouldn't care for it," he replied, and upon a daring impulse he +added, "Kenby and Mrs. Adding might." If she took this suggestion in good +part, he could tell her that Kenby was in Wurzburg. + +"Don't speak of them! They're in just that besotted early middle-age when +life has settled into a self-satisfied present, with no past and no +future; the most philistine, the most bourgeois, moment of existence. +Better be elderly at once, as far as appreciation of all this goes." She +rose and put her hand on his arm, and pushed him away in the impulsive +fashion of her youth, across alleys of old trees toward a balustraded +terrace in the background which had tempted her. + +"It isn't so bad, being elderly," he said. "By that time we have +accumulated enough past to sit down and really enjoy its associations. We +have got all sorts of perspectives and points of view. We know where we +are at." + +"I don't mind being elderly. The world's just as amusing as ever, and +lots of disagreeable things have dropped out. It's the getting more than +elderly; it's the getting old; and then--" + +They shrank a little closer together, and walked on in silence till he +said, "Perhaps there's something else, something better--somewhere." + +They had reached the balustraded terrace, and were pausing for pleasure +in the garden tops below, with the flowery spaces, and the statued +fountains all coming together. She put her hand on one of the fat little +urchin-groups on the stone coping. "I don't want cherubs, when I can have +these putti. And those old prince-bishops didn't, either!" + +"I don't suppose they kept a New England conscience," he said, with a +vague smile. "It would be difficult in the presence of the rococo." + +They left the garden through the beautiful gate which the old court +ironsmith Oegg hammered out in lovely forms of leaves and flowers, and +shaped laterally upward, as lightly as if with a waft of his hand, in +gracious Louis Quinze curves; and they looked back at it in the kind of +despair which any perfection inspires. They said how feminine it was, how +exotic, how expressive of a luxurious ideal of life which art had +purified and left eternally charming. They remembered their Ruskinian +youth, and the confidence with which they would once have condemned it; +and they had a sense of recreance in now admiring it; but they certainly +admired it, and it remained for them the supreme expression of that +time-soul, mundane, courtly, aristocratic, flattering, which once +influenced the art of the whole world, and which had here so curiously +found its apotheosis in a city remote from its native place and under a +rule sacerdotally vowed to austerity. The vast superb palace of the +prince bishops, which was now to house a whole troop of sovereigns, +imperial, royal, grand ducal and ducal, swelled aloft in superb +amplitude; but it did not realize their historic pride so effectively as +this exquisite work of the court ironsmith. It related itself in its +aerial beauty to that of the Tiepolo frescoes which the travellers knew +were swimming and soaring on the ceilings within, and from which it +seemed to accent their exclusion with a delicate irony, March said. "Or +iron-mongery," he corrected himself upon reflection. + + + + +LIV. + +He had forgotten Kenby in these aesthetic interests, but he remembered +him again when he called a carriage, and ordered it driven to their +hotel. It was the hour of the German mid-day table d'hote, and they would +be sure to meet him there. The question now was how March should own his +presence in time to prevent his wife from showing her ignorance of it to +Kenby himself, and he was still turning the question hopelessly over in +his mind when the sight of the hotel seemed to remind her of a fact which +she announced. + +"Now, my dear, I am tired to death, and I am not going to sit through a +long table d'hote. I want you to send me up a simple beefsteak and a cup +of tea to our rooms; and I don't want you to come near for hours; because +I intend to take a whole afternoon nap. You can keep all the maps and +plans, and guides, and you had better go and see what the Volksfest is +like; it will give you some notion of the part the people are really +taking in all this official celebration, and you know I don't care. Don't +come up after dinner to see how I am getting along; I shall get along; +and if you should happen to wake me after I had dropped off--" + +Kenby had seen them arrive from where he sat at the reading-room window, +waiting for the dinner hour, and had meant to rush out and greet Mrs. +March as they passed up the corridor. But she looked so tired that he had +decided to spare her till she came down to dinner; and as he sat with +March at their soup, he asked if she were not well. + +March explained, and he provisionally invented some regrets from her that +she should not see Kenby till supper. + +Kenby ordered a bottle of one of the famous Wurzburg wines for their +mutual consolation in her absence, and in the friendliness which its +promoted they agreed to spend the afternoon together. No man is so +inveterate a husband as not to take kindly an occasional release to +bachelor companionship, and before the dinner was over they agreed that +they would go to the Volksfest, and get some notion of the popular life +and amusements of Wurzburg, which was one of the few places where Kenby +had never been before; and they agreed that they would walk. + +Their way was partly up the quay of the Main, past a barrack full of +soldiers. They met detachments of soldiers everywhere, infantry, +artillery, cavalry. + +"This is going to be a great show," Kenby said, meaning the manoeuvres, +and he added, as if now he had kept away from the subject long enough and +had a right to recur to it, at least indirectly, "I should like to have +Rose see it, and get his impressions." + +"I've an idea he wouldn't approve of it. His mother says his mind is +turning more and more to philanthropy." + +Kenby could not forego such a chance to speak of Mrs. Adding. "It's one +of the prettiest things to see how she understands Rose. It's charming to +see them together. She wouldn't have half the attraction without him." + +"Oh, yes," March assented. He had often wondered how a man wishing to +marry a widow managed with the idea of her children by another marriage; +but if Kenby was honest; it was much simpler than he had supposed. He +could not say this to him, however, and in a certain embarrassment he had +with the conjecture in his presence he attempted a diversion. "We're +promised something at the Volksfest which will be a great novelty to us +as Americans. Our driver told us this morning that one of the houses +there was built entirely of wood." + +When they reached the grounds of the Volksfest, this civil feature of the +great military event at hand, which the Marches had found largely set +forth in the programme of the parade, did not fully keep the glowing +promises made for it; in fact it could not easily have done so. It was in +a pleasant neighborhood of new villas such as form the modern quarter of +every German city, and the Volksfest was even more unfinished than its +environment. It was not yet enclosed by the fence which was to hide its +wonders from the non-paying public, but March and Kenby went in through +an archway where the gate-money was as effectually collected from them as +if they were barred every other entrance. + +The wooden building was easily distinguishable from the other edifices +because these were tents and booths still less substantial. They did not +make out its function, but of the others four sheltered merry-go-rounds, +four were beer-gardens, four were restaurants, and the rest were devoted +to amusements of the usual country-fair type. Apparently they had little +attraction for country people. The Americans met few peasants in the +grounds, and neither at the Edison kinematograph, where they refreshed +their patriotism with some scenes of their native life, nor at the little +theatre where they saw the sports of the arena revived, in the wrestle of +a woman with a bear, did any of the people except tradesmen and artisans +seem to be taking part in the festival expression of the popular +pleasure. + +The woman, who finally threw the bear, whether by slight, or by main +strength, or by a previous understanding with him, was a slender +creature, pathetically small and not altogether plain; and March as they +walked away lapsed into a pensive muse upon her strange employ. He +wondered how she came to take it up, and whether she began with the bear +when they were both very young, and she could easily throw him. + +"Well, women have a great deal more strength than we suppose," Kenby +began with a philosophical air that gave March the hope of some rational +conversation. Then his eye glazed with a far-off look, and a doting smile +came into his face. "When we went through the Dresden gallery together, +Rose and I were perfectly used up at the end of an hour, but his mother +kept on as long as there was anything to see, and came away as fresh as a +peach." + +Then March saw that it was useless to expect anything different from him, +and he let him talk on about Mrs. Adding all the rest of the way back to +the hotel. Kenby seemed only to have begun when they reached the door, +and wanted to continue the subject in the reading-room. + +March pleaded his wish to find how his wife had got through the +afternoon, and he escaped to her. He would have told her now that Kenby +was in the house, but he was really so sick of the fact himself that he +could not speak of it at once, and he let her go on celebrating all she +had seen from the window since she had waked from her long nap. She said +she could never be glad enough that they had come just at that time. +Soldiers had been going by the whole afternoon, and that made it so +feudal. + +"Yes," he assented. "But aren't you coming up to the station with me to +see the Prince-Regent arrive? He's due at seven, you know." + +"I declare I had forgotten all about it. No, I'm not equal to it. You +must go; you can tell me everything; be sure to notice how the Princess +Maria looks; the last of the Stuarts, you know; and some people consider +her the rightful Queen of England; and I'll have the supper ordered, and +we can go down as soon as you've got back." + + + + +LV. + +March felt rather shabby stealing away without Kenby; but he had really +had as much of Mrs. Adding as he could stand, for one day, and he was +even beginning to get sick of Rose. Besides, he had not sent back a line +for 'Every Other Week' yet, and he had made up his mind to write a sketch +of the manoeuvres. To this end he wished to receive an impression of the +Prince-Regent's arrival which should not be blurred or clouded by other +interests. His wife knew the kind of thing he liked to see, and would +have helped him out with his observations, but Kenby would have got in +the way, and would have clogged the movement of his fancy in assigning +the facts to the parts he would like them to play in the sketch. + +At least he made some such excuses to himself as he hurried along toward +the Kaiserstrasse. The draught of universal interest in that direction +had left the other streets almost deserted, but as he approached the +thoroughfare he found all the ways blocked, and the horse-cars, +ordinarily so furiously headlong, arrested by the multiple ranks of +spectators on the sidewalks. The avenue leading from the railway station +to the palace was decorated with flags and garlands, and planted with the +stems of young firs and birches. The doorways were crowded, and the +windows dense with eager faces peering out of the draped bunting. The +carriageway was kept clear by mild policemen who now and then allowed one +of the crowd to cross it. + +The crowd was made up mostly of women and boys, and when March joined +them, they had already been waiting an hour for the sight of the princes +who were to bless them with a vision of the faery race which kings always +are to common men. He thought the people looked dull, and therefore able +to bear the strain of expectation with patience better than a livelier +race. They relieved it by no attempt at joking; here and there a dim +smile dawned on a weary face, but it seemed an effect of amiability +rather than humor. There was so little of this, or else it was so well +bridled by the solemnity of the occasion, that not a man, woman, or child +laughed when a bareheaded maid-servant broke through the lines and ran +down between them with a life-size plaster bust of the Emperor William in +her arms: she carried it like an overgrown infant, and in alarm at her +conspicuous part she cast frightened looks from side to side without +arousing any sort of notice. Undeterred by her failure, a young dog, +parted from his owner, and seeking him in the crowd, pursued his search +in a wild flight down the guarded roadway with an air of anxiety that in +America would have won him thunders of applause, and all sorts of kindly +encouragements to greater speed. But this German crowd witnessed his +progress apparently without interest, and without a sign of pleasure. +They were there to see the Prince-Regent arrive, and they did not suffer +themselves to be distracted by any preliminary excitement. Suddenly the +indefinable emotion which expresses the fulfilment of expectation in a +waiting crowd passed through the multitude, and before he realized it +March was looking into the friendly gray-bearded face of the +Prince-Regent, for the moment that his carriage allowed in passing. This +came first preceded by four outriders, and followed by other simple +equipages of Bavarian blue, full of highnesses of all grades. Beside the +Regent sat his daughter-in-law, the Princess Maria, her silvered hair +framing a face as plain and good as the Regent's, if not so intelligent. + +He, in virtue of having been born in Wurzburg, is officially supposed to +be specially beloved by his fellow townsmen; and they now testified their +affection as he whirled through their ranks, bowing right and left, by +what passes in Germany for a cheer. It is the word Hoch, groaned forth +from abdominal depths, and dismally prolonged in a hollow roar like that +which the mob makes behind the scenes at the theatre before bursting in +visible tumult on the stage. Then the crowd dispersed, and March came +away wondering why such a kindly-looking Prince-Regent should not have +given them a little longer sight of himself; after they had waited so +patiently for hours to see him. But doubtless in those countries, he +concluded, the art of keeping the sovereign precious by suffering him to +be rarely and briefly seen is wisely studied. + +On his way home he resolved to confess Kenby's presence; and he did so as +soon as he sat down to supper with his wife. "I ought to have told you +the first thing after breakfast. But when I found you in that mood of +having the place all to ourselves, I put it off." + +"You took terrible chances, my dear," she said, gravely. + +"And I have been terribly punished. You've no idea how much Kenby has +talked to me about Mrs. Adding!" + +She broke out laughing. "Well, perhaps you've suffered enough. But you +can see now, can't you, that it would have been awful if I had met him, +and let out that I didn't know he was here?" + +"Terrible. But if I had told, it would have spoiled the whole morning for +you; you couldn't have thought of anything else." + +"Oh, I don't know," she said, airily. "What should you think if I told +you I had known he was here ever since last night?" She went on in +delight at the start he gave. "I saw him come into the hotel while you +were gone for the guide-books, and I determined to keep it from you as +long as I could; I knew it would worry you. We've both been very nice; +and I forgive you," she hurried on, "because I've really got something to +tell you." + +"Don't tell me that Burnamy is here!" + +"Don't jump to conclusions! No, Burnamy isn't here, poor fellow! And +don't suppose that I'm guilty of concealment because I haven't told you +before. I was just thinking whether I wouldn't spare you till morning, +but now I shall let you take the brunt of it. Mrs. Adding and Rose are +here." She gave the fact time to sink in, and then she added, "And Miss +Triscoe and her father are here." + +"What is the matter with Major Eltwin and his wife being here, too? Are +they in our hotel?" + +"No, they are not. They came to look for rooms while you were off waiting +for the Prince-Regent, and I saw them. They intended to go to Frankfort +for the manoeuvres, but they heard that there was not even standing-room +there, and so the general telegraphed to the Spanischer Hof, and they all +came here. As it is, he will have to room with Rose, and Agatha and Mrs. +Adding will room together. I didn't think Agatha was looking very well; +she looked unhappy; I don't believe she's heard, from Burnamy yet; I +hadn't a chance to ask her. And there's something else that I'm afraid +will fairly make you sick." + +"Oh, no; go on. I don't think anything can do that, after an afternoon of +Kenby's confidences." + +"It's worse than Kenby," she said with a sigh. "You know I told you at +Carlsbad I thought that ridiculous old thing was making up to Mrs. +Adding." + +"Kenby? Why of co--" + +"Don't be stupid, my dear! No, not Kenby: General Triscoe. I wish you +could have been here to see him paying her all sort; of silly attentions, +and hear him making her compliments." + +"Thank you. I think I'm just as well without it. Did she pay him silly +attentions and compliments, too?" + +"That's the only thing that can make me forgive her for his wanting her. +She was keeping him at arm's-length the whole time, and she was doing it +so as not to make him contemptible before his daughter." + +"It must have been hard. And Rose?" + +"Rose didn't seem very well. He looks thin and pale; but he's sweeter +than ever. She's certainly commoner clay than Rose. No, I won't say that! +It's really nothing but General Triscoe's being an old goose about her +that makes her seem so, and it isn't fair." + +March went down to his coffee in the morning with the delicate duty of +telling Kenby that Mrs. Adding was in town. Kenby seemed to think it +quite natural she should wish to see the manoeuvres, and not at all +strange that she should come to them with General Triscoe and his +daughter. He asked if March would not go with him to call upon her after +breakfast, and as this was in the line of his own instructions from Mrs. +March, he went. + +They found Mrs. Adding with the Triscoes, and March saw nothing that was +not merely friendly, or at the most fatherly, in the general's behavior +toward her. If Mrs. Adding or Miss Triscoe saw more, they hid it in a +guise of sisterly affection for each other. At the most the general +showed a gayety which one would not have expected of him under any +conditions, and which the fact that he and Rose had kept each other awake +a good deal the night before seemed so little adapted to call out. He +joked with Rose about their room and their beds, and put on a comradery +with him that was not a perfect fit, and that suffered by contrast with +the pleasure of the boy and Kenby in meeting. There was a certain +question in the attitude of Mrs. Adding till March helped Kenby to +account for his presence; then she relaxed in an effect of security so +tacit that words overstate it, and began to make fun of Rose. + +March could not find that Miss Triscoe looked unhappy, as his wife had +said; he thought simply that she had grown plainer; but when he reported +this, she lost her patience with him. In a girl, she said, plainness was +unhappiness; and she wished to know when he would ever learn to look an +inch below the surface: She was sure that Agatha Triscoe had not heard +from Burnamy since the Emperor's birthday; that she was at swords'-points +with her father, and so desperate that she did not care what became of +her. + +He had left Kenby with the others, and now, after his wife had talked +herself tired of them all, he proposed going out again to look about the +city, where there was nothing for the moment to remind them of the +presence of their friends or even of their existence. She answered that +she was worrying about all those people, and trying to work out their +problem for them. He asked why she did not let them work it out +themselves as they would have to do, after all her worry, and she said +that where her sympathy had been excited she could not stop worrying, +whether it did any good or not, and she could not respect any one who +could drop things so completely out of his mind as he could; she had +never been able to respect that in him. + +"I know, my dear," he assented. "But I don't think it's a question of +moral responsibility; it's a question of mental structure, isn't it? Your +consciousness isn't built in thought-tight compartments, and one emotion +goes all through it, and sinks you; but I simply close the doors and shut +the emotion in, and keep on." + +The fancy pleased him so much that he worked it out in all its +implications, and could not, after their long experience of each other, +realize that she was not enjoying the joke too, till she said she saw +that he merely wished to tease. Then, too late, he tried to share her +worry; but she protested that she was not worrying at all; that she cared +nothing about those people: that she was nervous, she was tired; and she +wished he would leave her, and go out alone. + +He found himself in the street again, and he perceived that he must be +walking fast when a voice called him by name, and asked him what his +hurry was. The voice was Stoller's, who got into step with him and +followed the first with a second question. + +"Made up your mind to go to the manoeuvres with me?" + +His bluntness made it easy for March to answer: "I'm afraid my wife +couldn't stand the drive back and forth." + +"Come without her." + +"Thank you. It's very kind of you. I'm not certain that I shall go at +all. If I do, I shall run out by train, and take my chances with the +crowd." + +Stoller insisted no further. He felt no offence at the refusal of his +offer, or chose to show none. He said, with the same uncouth abruptness +as before: "Heard anything of that fellow since he left Carlsbad?" + +"Burnamy?" + +"Mm." + +"No." + +"Know where he is?" + +"I don't in the least." + +Stoller let another silence elapse while they hurried on, before he said, +"I got to thinking what he done afterwards. He wasn't bound to look out +for me; he might suppose I knew what I was about." + +March turned his face and stared in Stoller's, which he was letting hang +forward as he stamped heavily on. Had the disaster proved less than he +had feared, and did he still want Burnamy's help in patching up the +broken pieces; or did he really wish to do Burnamy justice to his friend? + +In any case March's duty was clear. "I think Burnamy was bound to look +out for you; Mr. Stoller, and I am glad to know that he saw it in the +same light." + +"I know he did," said Stoker with a blaze as from a long-smouldering +fury, "and damn him, I'm not going to have it. I'm not going to, plead +the baby act with him, or with any man. You tell him so, when you get the +chance. You tell him I don't hold him accountable for anything I made him +do. That ain't business; I don't want him around me, any more; but if he +wants to go back to the paper he can have his place. You tell him I stand +by what I done; and it's all right between him and me. I hain't done +anything about it, the way I wanted him to help me to; I've let it lay, +and I'm a-going to. I guess it ain't going to do me any harm, after all; +our people hain't got very long memories; but if it is, let it. You tell +him it's all right." + +"I don't know where he is, Mr. Stoller, and I don't know that I care to +be the bearer of your message," said March. + +"Why not?" + +"Why, for one thing, I don't agree with you that it's all right. Your +choosing to stand by the consequences of Burnamy's wrong doesn't undo it. +As I understand, you don't pardon it--" + +Stoller gulped and did not answer at once. Then he said, "I stand by what +I done. I'm not going to let him say I turned him down for doing what I +told him to, because I hadn't the sense to know what I was about." + +"Ah, I don't think it's a thing he'll like to speak of in any case," said +March. + +Stoller left him, at the corner they had reached, as abruptly as he had +joined him, and March hurried back to his wife, and told her what had +just passed between him and Stoller. + +She broke out, "Well, I am surprised at you, my dear! You have always +accused me of suspecting people, and attributing bad motives; and here +you've refused even to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt. He +merely wanted to save his savage pride with you, and that's all he wants +to do with Burnamy. How could it hurt the poor boy to know that Stoller +doesn't blame him? Why should you refuse to give his message to Burnamy? +I don't want you to ridicule me for my conscience any more, Basil; you're +twice as bad as I ever was. Don't you think that a person can ever +expiate an offence? I've often heard you say that if any one owned his +fault, he put it from him, and it was the same as if it hadn't been; and +hasn't Burnamy owned up over and over again? I'm astonished at you, +dearest." + +March was in fact somewhat astonished at himself in the light of her +reasoning; but she went on with some sophistries that restored him to his +self-righteousness. + +"I suppose you think he has interfered with Stoller's political ambition, +and injured him in that way. Well, what if he has? Would it be a good +thing to have a man like that succeed in politics? You're always saying +that the low character of our politicians is the ruin of the country; and +I'm sure," she added, with a prodigious leap over all the sequences, +"that Mr. Stoller is acting nobly; and it's your duty to help him relieve +Burnamy's mind." At the laugh he broke into she hastened to say, "Or if +you won't, I hope you'll not object to my doing so, for I shall, anyway!" + +She rose as if she were going to begin at once, in spite of his laughing; +and in fact she had already a plan for coming to Stoller's assistance by +getting at Burnamy through Miss Triscoe, whom she suspected of knowing +where he was. There had been no chance for them to speak of him either +that morning or the evening before, and after a great deal of controversy +with herself in her husband's presence she decided to wait till they came +naturally together the next morning for the walk to the Capuchin Church +on the hill beyond the river, which they had agreed to take. She could +not keep from writing a note to Miss Triscoe begging her to be sure to +come, and hinting that she had something very important to speak of. + +She was not sure but she had been rather silly to do this, but when they +met the girl confessed that she had thought of giving up the walk, and +might not have come except for Mrs. March's note. She had come with Rose, +and had left him below with March; Mrs. Adding was coming later with +Kenby and General Triscoe. + +Mrs. March lost no time in telling her the great news; and if she had +been in doubt before of the girl's feeling for Burnamy she was now in +none. She had the pleasure of seeing her flush with hope, and then the +pain which was also a pleasure, of seeing her blanch with dismay. + +"I don't know where he is, Mrs. March. I haven't heard a word from him +since that night in Carlsbad. I expected--I didn't know but you--" + +Mrs. March shook her head. She treated the fact skillfully as something +to be regretted simply because it would be such a relief to Burnamy to +know how Mr. Stoller now felt. Of course they could reach him somehow; +you could always get letters to people in Europe, in the end; and, in +fact, it was altogether probable that he was that very instant in +Wurzburg; for if the New York-Paris Chronicle had wanted him to write up +the Wagner operas, it would certainly want him to write up the +manoeuvres. She established his presence in Wurzburg by such an +irrefragable chain of reasoning that, at a knock outside, she was just +able to kelp back a scream, while she ran to open the door. It was not +Burnamy, as in compliance with every nerve it ought to have been, but her +husband, who tried to justify his presence by saying that they were all +waiting for her and Miss Triscoe, and asked when they were coming. + +She frowned him silent, and then shut herself outside with him long +enough to whisper, "Say she's got a headache, or anything you please; but +don't stop talking here with me, or I shall go wild." She then shut +herself in again, with the effect of holding him accountable for the +whole affair. + + + + +LVI. + +General Triscoe could not keep his irritation, at hearing that his +daughter was not coming, out of the excuses he made to Mrs. Adding; he +said again and again that it must seem like a discourtesy to her. She +gayly disclaimed any such notion; she would not hear of putting off their +excursion to another day; it had been raining just long enough to give +them a reasonable hope of a few hours' drought, and they might not have +another dry spell for weeks. She slipped off her jacket after they +started, and gave it to Kenby, but she let General Triscoe hold her +umbrella over her, while he limped beside her. She seemed to March, as he +followed with Rose, to be playing the two men off against each other, +with an ease which he wished his wife could be there to see, and to judge +aright. + +They crossed by the Old Bridge, which is of the earliest years of the +seventh century, between rows of saints whose statues surmount the piers. +Some are bishops as well as saints; one must have been at Rome in his +day, for he wore his long thick beard in the fashion of Michelangelo's +Moses. He stretched out toward the passers two fingers of blessing and +was unaware of the sparrow which had lighted on them and was giving him +the effect of offering it to the public admiration. Squads of soldiers +tramping by turned to look and smile, and the dull faces of citizens +lighted up at the quaint sight. Some children stopped and remained very +quiet, not to scare away the bird; and a cold-faced, spiritual-looking +priest paused among them as if doubting whether to rescue the +absent-minded bishop from a situation derogatory to his dignity; but he +passed on, and then the sparrow suddenly flew off. + +Rose Adding had lingered for the incident with March, but they now pushed +on, and came up with the others at the end of the bridge, where they +found them in question whether they had not better take a carriage and +drive to the foot of the hill before they began their climb. March +thanked them, but said he was keeping up the terms of his cure, and was +getting in all the walking he could. Rose begged his mother not to +include him in the driving party; he protested that he was feeling so +well, and the walk was doing him good. His mother consented, if he would +promise not to get tired, and then she mounted into the two-spanner which +had driven instinctively up to their party when their parley began, and +General Triscoe took the place beside her, while Kenby, with smiling +patience, seated himself in front. + +Rose kept on talking with March about Wurzburg and its history, which it +seemed he had been reading the night before when he could not sleep. He +explained, "We get little histories of the places wherever we go. That's +what Mr. Kenby does, you know." + +"Oh, yes," said March. + +"I don't suppose I shall get a chance to read much here," Rose continued, +"with General Triscoe in the room. He doesn't like the light." + +"Well, well. He's rather old, you know. And you musn't read too much, +Rose. It isn't good for you." + +"I know, but if I don't read, I think, and that keeps me awake worse. Of +course, I respect General Triscoe for being in the war, and getting +wounded," the boy suggested. + +"A good many did it," March was tempted to say. + +The boy did not notice his insinuation. "I suppose there were some things +they did in the army, and then they couldn't get over the habit. But +General Grant says in his 'Life' that he never used a profane expletive." + +"Does General Triscoe?" + +Rose answered reluctantly, "If anything wakes him in the night, or if he +can't make these German beds over to suit him--" + +"I see." March turned his face to hide the smile which he would not have +let the boy detect. He thought best not to let Rose resume his +impressions of the general; and in talk of weightier matters they found +themselves at that point of the climb where the carriage was waiting for +them. From this point they followed an alley through ivied, garden walls, +till they reached the first of the balustraded terraces which ascend to +the crest of the hill where the church stands. Each terrace is planted +with sycamores, and the face of the terrace wall supports a bass-relief +commemorating with the drama of its lifesize figures the stations of the +cross. + +Monks and priests were coming and going, and dropped on the steps leading +from terrace to terrace were women and children on their knees in prayer. +It was all richly reminiscent of pilgrim scenes in other Catholic lands; +but here there was a touch of earnest in the Northern face of the +worshipers which the South had never imparted. Even in the beautiful +rococo interior of the church at the top of the hill there was a sense of +something deeper and truer than mere ecclesiasticism; and March came out +of it in a serious muse while the boy at his side did nothing to +interrupt. A vague regret filled his heart as he gazed silently out over +the prospect of river and city and vineyard, purpling together below the +top where he stood, and mixed with this regret was a vague resentment of +his wife's absence. She ought to have been there to share his pang and +his pleasure; they had so long enjoyed everything together that without +her he felt unable to get out of either emotion all there was in it. + +The forgotten boy stole silently down the terraces after the rest of the +party who had left him behind with March. At the last terrace they +stopped and waited; and after a delay that began to be long to Mrs. +Adding, she wondered aloud what could have become of them. + +Kenby promptly offered to go back and see, and she consented in seeming +to refuse: "It isn't worth while. Rose has probably got Mr. March into +some deep discussion, and they've forgotten all about us. But if you will +go, Mr. Kenby, you might just remind Rose of my existence." She let him +lay her jacket on her shoulders before he left her, and then she sat down +on one of the steps, which General Triscoe kept striking with the point +of her umbrella as he stood before her. + +"I really shall have to take it from you if you do that any more," she +said, laughing up in his face. "I'm serious." + +He stopped. "I wish I could believe you were serious, for a moment." + +"You may, if you think it will do you any good. But I don't see why." + +The general smiled, but with a kind of tremulous eagerness which might +have been pathetic to any one who liked him. "Do you know this is almost +the first time I have spoken alone with you?" + +"Really, I hadn't noticed," said Mrs. Adding. + +General Triscoe laughed in rather a ghastly way. "Well, that's +encouraging, at least, to a man who's had his doubts whether it wasn't +intended." + +"Intended? By whom? What do you mean, General Triscoe? Why in the world +shouldn't you have spoken alone with me before?" + +He was not, with all his eagerness, ready to say, and while she smiled +pleasantly she had the look in her eyes of being brought to bay and being +prepared, if it must come to that, to have the worst over, then and +there. She was not half his age, but he was aware of her having no +respect for his years; compared with her average American past as he +understood it, his social place was much higher, but, she was not in the +least awed by it; in spite of his war record she was making him behave +like a coward. He was in a false position, and if he had any one but +himself to blame he had not her. He read her equal knowledge of these +facts in the clear eyes that made him flush and turn his own away. + +Then he started with a quick "Hello!" and stood staring up at the steps +from the terrace above, where Rose Adding was staying himself weakly by a +clutch of Kenby on one side and March on the other. + +His mother looked round and caught herself up from where she sat and ran +toward him. "Oh, Rose!" + +"It's nothing, mother," he called to her, and as she dropped on her knees +before him he sank limply against her. "It was like what I had in +Carlsbad; that's all. Don't worry about me, please!" + +"I'm not worrying, Rose," she said with courage of the same texture as +his own. "You've been walking too much. You must go back in the carriage +with us. Can't you have it come here?" she asked Kenby. + +"There's no road, Mrs. Adding. But if Rose would let me carry him--" + +"I can walk," the boy protested, trying to lift himself from her neck. + +"No, no! you mustn't." She drew away and let him fall into the arms that +Kenby put round him. He raised the frail burden lightly to his shoulder, +and moved strongly away, followed by the eyes of the spectators who had +gathered about the little group, but who dispersed now, and went back to +their devotions. + +March hurried after Kenby with Mrs. Adding, whom he told he had just +missed Rose and was looking about for him, when Kenby came with her +message for them. They made sure that he was nowhere about the church, +and then started together down the terraces. At the second or third +station below they found the boy clinging to the barrier that protected +the bass-relief from the zeal of the devotees. He looked white and sick, +though he insisted that he was well, and when he turned to come away with +them he reeled and would have fallen if Kenby had not caught him. Kenby +wanted to carry him, but Rose would not let him, and had made his way +down between them. + +"Yea, he has such a spirit," she said, "and I've no doubt he's suffering +now more from Mr. Kenby's kindness than from his own sickness he had one +of these giddy turns in Carlsbad, though, and I shall certainly have a +doctor to see him." + +"I think I should, Mrs. Adding," said March, not too gravely, for it +seemed to him that it was not quite his business to alarm her further, if +she was herself taking the affair with that seriousness. He questioned +whether she was taking it quite seriously enough, when she turned with a +laugh, and called to General Triscoe, who was limping down the steps of +the last terrace behind them: + +"Oh, poor General Triscoe! I thought you had gone on ahead." + +General Triscoe could not enter into the joke of being forgotten, +apparently. He assisted with gravity at the disposition of the party for +the return, when they all reached the carriage. Rose had the place beside +his mother, and Kenby wished March to take his with the general and let +him sit with the driver; but he insisted that he would rather walk home, +and he did walk till they had driven out of eight. Then he called a +passing one-spanner, and drove to his hotel in comfort and silence. + + + + +LVII. + +Kenby did not come to the Swan before supper; then he reported that the +doctor had said Rose was on the verge of a nervous collapse. He had +overworked at school, but the immediate trouble was the high, thin air, +which the doctor said he must be got out of at once, into a quiet place +at the sea-shore somewhere. He had suggested Ostend; or some point on the +French coast; Kenby had thought of Schevleningen, and the doctor had said +that would do admirably. + +"I understood from Mrs. Adding," he concluded, "that you were going. +there for your after-cure, Mr. March, and I didn't know but you might be +going soon." + +At the mention of Schevleningen the Marches had looked at each other with +a guilty alarm, which they both tried to give the cast of affectionate +sympathy but she dismissed her fear that he might be going to let his +compassion prevail with him to his hurt when he said: "Why, we ought to +have been there before this, but I've been taking my life in my hands in +trying to see a little of Germany, and I'm afraid now that Mrs. March has +her mind too firmly fixed on Berlin to let me think of going to +Schevleningen till we've been there." + +"It's too bad!" said Mrs. March, with real regret. "I wish we were +going." But she had not the least notion of gratifying her wish; and they +were all silent till Kenby broke out: + +"Look here! You know how I feel about Mrs Adding! I've been pretty frank +with Mr. March myself, and I've had my suspicions that she's been frank +with you, Mrs. March. There isn't any doubt about my wanting to marry +her, and up to this time there hasn't been any doubt about her not +wanting to marry me. But it isn't a question of her or of me, now. It's a +question of Rose. I love the boy," and Kenby's voice shook, and he +faltered a moment. "Pshaw! You understand." + +"Indeed I do, Mr. Kenby," said Mrs. March. "I perfectly understand you." + +"Well, I don't think Mrs. Adding is fit to make the journey with him +alone, or to place herself in the best way after she gets to +Schevleningen. She's been badly shaken up; she broke down before the +doctor; she said she didn't know what to do; I suppose she's +frightened--" + +Kenby stopped again, and March asked, "When is she going?" + +"To-morrow," said Kenby, and he added, "And now the question is, why +shouldn't I go with her?" + +Mrs. March gave a little start, and looked at her husband, but he said +nothing, and Kenby seemed not to have supposed that he would say +anything. + +"I know it would be very American, and all that, but I happen to be an +American, and it wouldn't be out of character for me. I suppose," he +appealed to Mrs. March, "that it's something I might offer to do if it +were from New York to Florida--and I happened to be going there? And I +did happen to be going to Holland." + +"Why, of course, Mr. Kenby," she responded, with such solemnity that +March gave way in an outrageous laugh. + +Kenby laughed, and Mrs. March laughed too, but with an inner note of +protest. + +"Well," Kenby continued, still addressing her, "what I want you to do is +to stand by me when I propose it." + +Mrs. March gathered strength to say, "No, Mr. Kenby, it's your own +affair, and you must take the responsibility." + +"Do you disapprove?" + +"It isn't the same as it would be at home. You see that yourself." + +"Well," said Kenby, rising, "I have to arrange about their getting away +to-morrow. It won't be easy in this hurly-burly that's coming off." + +"Give Rose our love; and tell Mrs. Adding that I'll come round and see +her to-morrow before she starts." + +"Oh! I'm afraid you can't, Mrs. March. They're to start at six in the +morning." + +"They are! Then we must go and see them tonight. We'll be there almost as +soon as you are." + +March went up to their rooms with, his wife, and she began on the stairs: + +"Well, my dear, I hope you realize that your laughing so gave us +completely away. And what was there to keep grinning about, all through?" + +"Nothing but the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always +the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself +off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection +for Rose, was more than I could stand. I don't apologize for laughing; I +wanted to yell." + +His effrontery and his philosophy both helped to save him; and she said +from the point where he had side-tracked her mind: "I don't call it +disingenuous. He was brutally frank. He's made it impossible to treat the +affair with dignity. I want you to leave the whole thing to me, from this +out. Now, will you?" + +On their way to the Spanischer Hof she arranged in her own mind for Mrs. +Adding to get a maid, and for the doctor to send an assistant with her on +the journey, but she was in such despair with her scheme that she had not +the courage to right herself when Mrs. Adding met her with the appeal: + +"Oh, Mrs. March, I'm so glad you approve of Mr. Kenby's plan. It does +seem the only thing to do. I can't trust myself alone with Rose, and Mr. +Kenby's intending to go to Schevleningen a few days later anyway. Though +it's too bad to let him give up the manoeuvres." + +"I'm sure he won't mind that," Mrs. March's voice said mechanically, +while her thought was busy with the question whether this scandalous +duplicity was altogether Kenby's, and whether Mrs. Adding was as +guiltless of any share in it as she looked. She looked pitifully +distracted; she might not have understood his report; or Kenby might +really have mistaken Mrs. March's sympathy for favor. + +"No, he only lives to do good," Mrs. Adding returned. "He's with Rose; +won't you come in and see them?" + +Rose was lying back on the pillows of a sofa, from which they would not +let him get up. He was full of the trip to Holland, and had already +pushed Kenby, as Kenby owned, beyond the bounds of his very general +knowledge of the Dutch language, which Rose had plans for taking up after +they were settled in Schevleningen. The boy scoffed at the notion that he +was not perfectly well, and he wished to talk with March on the points +where he had found Kenby wanting. + +"Kenby is an encyclopaedia compared with me, Rose," the editor protested, +and he amplified his ignorance for the boy's good to an extent which Rose +saw was a joke. He left Holland to talk about other things which his +mother thought quite as bad for him. He wished to know if March did not +think that the statue of the bishop with the sparrow on its finger was a +subject for a poem; and March said gayly that if Rose would write it he +would print it in 'Every Other Week'. + +The boy flushed with pleasure at his banter. "No, I couldn't do it. But I +wish Mr. Burnamy had seen it. He could. Will you tell him about it?" He +wanted to know if March had heard from Burnamy lately, and in the midst +of his vivid interest he gave a weary sigh. + +His mother said that now he had talked enough, and bade him say good-by +to the Marches, who were coming so soon to Holland, anyway. Mrs. March +put her arms round him to kiss him, and when she let him sink back her +eyes were dim. + +"You see how frail he is?" said Mrs. Adding. "I shall not let him out of +my sight, after this, till he's well again." + +She had a kind of authority in sending Kenby away with them which was not +lost upon the witnesses. He asked them to come into the reading-room a +moment with him, and Mrs. March wondered if he were going to make some +excuse to her for himself; but he said: "I don't know how we're to manage +about the Triscoes. The general will have a room to himself, but if Mrs. +Adding takes Rose in with her, it leaves Miss Triscoe out, and there +isn't a room to be had in this house for love or money. Do you think," he +appealed directly to Mrs. March, "that it would do to offer her my room +at the Swan?" + +"Why, yes," she assented, with a reluctance rather for the complicity in +which he had already involved her, and for which he was still unpunished, +than for what he was now proposing. "Or she could come in with me, and +Mr. March could take it." + +"Whichever you think," said Kenby so submissively that she relented, to +ask: + +"And what will you do?" + +He laughed. "Well, people have been known to sleep in a chair. I shall +manage somehow." + +"You might offer to go in with the general," March suggested, and the men +apparently thought this was a joke. Mrs. March did not laugh in her +feminine worry about ways and means. + +"Where is Miss Triscoe?" she asked. "We haven't seen them." + +"Didn't Mrs. Adding tell you? They went to supper at a restaurant; the +general doesn't like the cooking here. They ought to have been back +before this." + +He looked up at the clock on the wall, and she said, "I suppose you would +like us to wait." + +"It would be very kind of you." + +"Oh, it's quite essential," she returned with an airy freshness which +Kenby did not seem to feel as painfully as he ought. + +They all sat down, and the Triscoes came in after a few minutes, and a +cloud on the general's face lifted at the proposition Kenby left Mrs. +March to make. + +"I thought that child ought to be in his mother's charge," he said. With +his own comfort provided for, he made no objections to Mrs. March's plan; +and Agatha went to take leave of Rose and his mother. "By-the-way," the +general turned to March, "I found Stoller at the restaurant where we +supped. He offered me a place in his carriage for the manoeuvres. How are +you going?" + +"I think I shall go by train. I don't fancy the long drive." + +"Well, I don't know that it's worse than the long walk after you leave +the train," said the general from the offence which any difference of +taste was apt to give him. "Are you going by train, too?" he asked Kenby +with indifference. + +"I'm not going at all," said Kenby. "I'm leaving Wurzburg in the +morning." + +"Oh, indeed," said the general. + +Mrs. March could not make out whether he knew that Kenby was going with +Rose and Mrs. Adding, but she felt that there must be a full and open +recognition of the fact among them. "Yes," she said, "isn't it fortunate +that Mr. Kenby should be going to Holland, too! I should have been so +unhappy about them if Mrs. Adding had been obliged to make that long +journey with poor little Rose alone." + +"Yes, yes; very fortunate, certainly," said the general colorlessly. + +Her husband gave her a glance of intelligent appreciation; but Kenby was +too simply, too densely content with the situation to know the value of +what she had done. She thought he must certainly explain, as he walked +back with her to the Swan, whether he had misrepresented her to Mrs. +Adding, or Mrs. Adding had misunderstood him. Somewhere there had been an +error, or a duplicity which it was now useless to punish; and Kenby was +so apparently unconscious of it that she had not the heart to be cross +with him. She heard Miss Triscoe behind her with March laughing in the +gayety which the escape from her father seemed to inspire in her. She was +promising March to go with him in the morning to see the Emperor and +Empress of Germany arrive at the station, and he was warning her that if +she laughed there, like that, she would subject him to fine and +imprisonment. She pretended that she would like to see him led off +between two gendarmes, but consented to be a little careful when he asked +her how she expected to get back to her hotel without him, if such a +thing happened. + + + + +LVIII. + +After all, Miss Triscoe did not go with March; she preferred to sleep. +The imperial party was to arrive at half past seven, but at six the crowd +was already dense before the station, and all along the street leading to +the Residenz. It was a brilliant day, with the promise of sunshine, +through which a chilly wind blew, for the manoeuvres. The colors of all +the German states flapped in this breeze from the poles wreathed with +evergreen which encircled the square; the workmen putting the last +touches on the bronzed allegory hurried madly to be done, and they had, +scarcely finished their labors when two troops of dragoons rode into the +place and formed before the station, and waited as motionlessly as their +horses would allow. + +These animals were not so conscious as lions at the approach of princes; +they tossed and stamped impatiently in the long interval before the +Regent and his daughter-in-law came to welcome their guests. All the +human beings, both those who were in charge and those who were under +charge, were in a quiver of anxiety to play their parts well, as if there +were some heavy penalty for failure in the least point. The policemen +keeping the people, in line behind the ropes which restrained them +trembled with eagerness; the faces of some of the troopers twitched. An +involuntary sigh went up from the crowd as the Regent's carriage +appeared, heralded by outriders, and followed by other plain carriages of +Bavarian blue with liveries of blue and silver. Then the whistle of the +Kaiser's train sounded; a trumpeter advanced and began to blow his +trumpet as they do in the theatre; and exactly at the appointed moment +the Emperor and Empress came out of the station through the brilliant +human alley leading from it, mounted their carriages, with the stage +trumpeter always blowing, and whirled swiftly round half the square and +flashed into the corner toward the Residenz out of sight. The same hollow +groans of Ho-o-o-ch greeted and followed them from the spectators as had +welcomed the Regent when he first arrived among his fellow-townsmen, with +the same effect of being the conventional cries of a stage mob behind the +scenes. + +The Emperor was like most of his innumerable pictures, with a swarthy +face from which his blue eyes glanced pleasantly; he looked good-humored +if not good-natured; the Empress smiled amiably beneath her deeply +fringed white parasol, and they both bowed right and left in +acknowledgment of those hollow groans; but again it seemed, to March that +sovereignty, gave the popular curiosity, not to call it devotion, a +scantier return than it merited. He had perhaps been insensibly working +toward some such perception as now came to him that the great difference +between Europe and America was that in Europe life is histrionic and +dramatized, and that in America, except when it is trying to be European, +it is direct and sincere. He wondered whether the innate conviction of +equality, the deep, underlying sense of a common humanity transcending +all social and civic pretences, was what gave their theatrical effect to +the shows of deference from low to high, and of condescension from high +to low. If in such encounters of sovereigns and subjects, the prince did +not play his part so well as the people, it might be that he had a harder +part to play, and that to support his dignity at all, to keep from being +found out the sham that he essentially was, he had to hurry across the +stage amidst the distracting thunders of the orchestra. If the star staid +to be scrutinized by the soldiers, citizens, and so forth, even the poor +supernumeraries and scene-shifters might see that he was a tallow candle +like themselves. + +In the censorious mood induced by the reflection that he had waited an +hour and a half for half a minute's glimpse of the imperial party, March +now decided not to go to the manoeuvres, where he might be subjected to +still greater humiliation and disappointment. He had certainly come to +Wurzburg for the manoeuvres, but Wurzburg had been richly repaying in +itself; and why should he stifle half an hour in an overcrowded train, +and struggle for three miles on foot against that harsh wind, to see a +multitude of men give proofs of their fitness to do manifold murder? He +was, in fact, not the least curious for the sight, and the only thing +that really troubled him was the question of how he should justify his +recreance to his wife. This did alloy the pleasure with which he began, +after an excellent breakfast at a neighboring cafe, to stroll about the +streets, though he had them almost to himself, so many citizens had +followed the soldiers to the manoeuvres. + +It was not till the soldiers began returning from the manoeuvres, +dusty-footed, and in white canvas overalls drawn over their trousers to +save them, that he went back to Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe at the Swan. +He had given them time enough to imagine him at the review, and to wonder +whether he had seen General Triscoe and the Stollers there, and they met +him with such confident inquiries that he would not undeceive them at +once. He let them divine from his inventive answers that he had not gone +to the manoeuvres, which put them in the best humor with themselves, and +the girl said it was so cold and rough that she wished her father had not +gone, either. The general appeared just before dinner and frankly avowed +the same wish. He was rasping and wheezing from the dust which filled his +lungs; he looked blown and red, and he was too angry with the company he +had been in to have any comments on the manoeuvres. He referred to the +military chiefly in relation to the Miss Stollers' ineffectual +flirtations, which he declared had been outrageous. Their father had +apparently no control over them whatever, or else was too ignorant to +know that they were misbehaving. They were without respect or reverence +for any one; they had talked to General Triscoe as if he were a boy of +their own age, or a dotard whom nobody need mind; they had not only kept +up their foolish babble before him, they had laughed and giggled, they +had broken into snatches of American song, they had all but whistled and +danced. They made loud comments in Illinois English--on the cuteness of +the officers whom they admired, and they had at one time actually got out +their handkerchiefs. He supposed they meant to wave them at the officers, +but at the look he gave them they merely put their hats together and +snickered in derision of him. They were American girls of the worst type; +they conformed to no standard of behavior; their conduct was personal. +They ought to be taken home. + +Mrs. March said she saw what he meant, and she agreed with him that they +were altogether unformed, and were the effect of their own ignorant +caprices. Probably, however, it was too late to amend them by taking them +away. + +"It would hide them, at any rate," he answered. "They would sink back +into the great mass of our vulgarity, and not be noticed. We behave like +a parcel of peasants with our women. We think that if no harm is meant or +thought, we may risk any sort of appearance, and we do things that are +scandalously improper simply because they are innocent. That may be all +very well at home, but people who prefer that sort of thing had better +stay there, where our peasant manners won't make them conspicuous." + +As their train ran northward out of Wurzburg that afternoon, Mrs. March +recurred to the general's closing words. "That was a slap at Mrs. Adding +for letting Kenby go off with her." + +She took up the history of the past twenty-four hours, from the time +March had left her with Miss Triscoe when he went with her father and the +Addings and Kenby to see that church. She had had no chance to bring up +these arrears until now, and she atoned to herself for the delay by +making the history very full, and going back and adding touches at any +point where she thought she had scanted it. After all, it consisted +mainly of fragmentary intimations from Miss Triscoe and of half-uttered +questions which her own art now built into a coherent statement. + +March could not find that the general had much resented Burnamy's +clandestine visit to Carlsbad when his daughter told him of it, or that +he had done more than make her promise that she would not keep up the +acquaintance upon any terms unknown to him. + +"Probably," Mrs. March said, "as long as he had any hopes of Mrs. Adding, +he was a little too self-conscious to be very up and down about Burnamy." + +"Then you think he was really serious about her?" + +"Now my dear! He was so serious that I suppose he was never so completely +taken aback in his life as when he met Kenby in Wurzburg and saw how she +received him. Of course, that put an end to the fight." + +"The fight?" + +"Yes--that Mrs. Adding and Agatha were keeping up to prevent his offering +himself." + +"Oh! And how do you know that they were keeping up the fight together?" + +"How do I? Didn't you see yourself what friends they were? Did you tell +him what Stoller had, said about Burnamy?" + +"I had no chance. I don't know that I should have done it, anyway. It +wasn't my affair." + +"Well, then, I think you might. It would have been everything for that +poor child; it would have completely justified her in her own eyes." + +"Perhaps your telling her will serve the same purpose." + +"Yes, I did tell her, and I am glad of it. She had a right to know it." + +"Did she think Stoller's willingness to overlook Burnamy's performance +had anything to do with its moral quality?" + +Mrs. March was daunted for the moment, but she said, "I told her you +thought that if a person owned to a fault they disowned it, and put it +away from them just as if it had never been committed; and that if a +person had taken their punishment for a wrong they had done, they had +expiated it so far as anybody else was concerned. And hasn't poor Burnamy +done both?" + +As a moralist March was flattered to be hoist with his own petard, but as +a husband he was not going to come down at once. "I thought probably you +had told her that. You had it pat from having just been over it with me. +When has she heard from him?" + +"Why, that's the strangest thing about it. She hasn't heard at all. She +doesn't know where he is. She thought we must know. She was terribly +broken up." + +"How did she show it?" + +"She didn't show it. Either you want to tease, or you've forgotten how +such things are with young people--or at least girls." + +"Yes, it's all a long time ago with me, and I never was a girl. Besides, +the frank and direct behavior of Kenby and Mrs. Adding has been very +obliterating to my early impressions of love-making." + +"It certainly hasn't been ideal," said Mrs. March with a sigh. + +"Why hasn't it been ideal?" he asked. "Kenby is tremendously in love with +her; and I believe she's had a fancy for him from the beginning. If it +hadn't been for Rose she would have accepted him at once; and now he's +essential to them both in their helplessness. As for Papa Triscoe and his +Europeanized scruples, if they have any reality at all they're the +residuum of his personal resentment, and Kenby and Mrs. Adding have +nothing to do with their unreality. His being in love with her is no +reason why he shouldn't be helpful to her when she needs him, and every +reason why he should. I call it a poem, such as very few people have the +luck to live out together." + +Mrs. March listened with mounting fervor, and when he stopped, she cried +out, "Well, my dear, I do believe you are right! It is ideal, as you say; +it's a perfect poem. And I shall always say--" + +She stopped at the mocking light which she caught in his look, and +perceived that he had been amusing himself with her perennial enthusiasm +for all sorts of love-affairs. But she averred that she did not care; +what he had said was true, and she should always hold him to it. + +They were again in the wedding-journey sentiment in which they had left +Carlsbad, when they found themselves alone together after their escape +from the pressure of others' interests. The tide of travel was towards +Frankfort, where the grand parade was to take place some days later. They +were going to Weimar, which was so few hours out of their way that they +simply must not miss it; and all the way to the old literary capital they +were alone in their compartment, with not even a stranger, much less a +friend to molest them. The flying landscape without was of their own +early autumnal mood, and when the vineyards of Wurzburg ceased to purple +it, the heavy after-math of hay and clover, which men, women, and +children were loading on heavy wains, and driving from the meadows +everywhere, offered a pastoral and pleasing change. It was always the +German landscape; sometimes flat and fertile, sometimes hilly and poor; +often clothed with dense woods, but always charming, with castled tops in +ruin or repair, and with levels where Gothic villages drowsed within +their walls, and dreamed of the mediaeval past, silent, without apparent +life, except for some little goose-girl driving her flock before her as +she sallied out into the nineteenth century in search of fresh pasturage. + +As their train mounted among the Thuringian uplands they were aware of a +finer, cooler air through their open window. The torrents foamed white +out of the black forests of fir and pine, and brawled along the valleys, +where the hamlets roused themselves in momentary curiosity as the train +roared into them from the many tunnels. The afternoon sunshine had the +glister of mountain sunshine everywhere, and the travellers had a +pleasant bewilderment in which their memories of Switzerland and the +White Mountains mixed with long-dormant emotions from Adirondack +sojourns. They chose this place and that in the lovely region where they +lamented that they had not come at once for the after-cure, and they +appointed enough returns to it in future years to consume all the summers +they had left to live. + + + + +LIX. + +It was falling night when they reached Weimar, where they found at the +station a provision of omnibuses far beyond the hotel accommodations. +They drove first to the Crown-Prince, which was in a promising state of +reparation, but which for the present could only welcome them to an +apartment where a canvas curtain cut them off from a freshly plastered +wall. The landlord deplored the fact, and sent hospitably out to try and +place them at the Elephant. But the Elephant was full, and the Russian +Court was full too. Then the landlord of the Crown-Prince bethought +himself of a new hotel, of the second class, indeed, but very nice, where +they might get rooms, and after the delay of an hour, they got a carriage +and drove away from the Crown-Prince, where the landlord continued to the +last as benevolent as if they had been a profit instead of a loss to him. + +The streets of the town at nine o'clock were empty and quiet, and they +instantly felt the academic quality of the place. Through the pale night +they could see that the architecture was of the classic sentiment which +they were destined to feel more and more; at one point they caught a +fleeting glimpse of two figures with clasped hands and half embraced, +which they knew for the statues of Goethe and Schiller; and when they +mounted to their rooms at the Grand-Duke of Saxe-Weimar, they passed +under a fresco representing Goethe and four other world-famous poets, +Shakspere, Milton, Tasso, and Schiller. The poets all looked like +Germans, as was just, and Goethe was naturally chief among them; he +marshalled the immortals on their way, and Schiller brought up the rear +and kept them from going astray in an Elysium where they did not speak +the language. For the rest, the hotel was brand-new, of a quite American +freshness, and was pervaded by a sweet smell as of straw matting, and +provided with steam-radiators. In the sense of its homelikeness the +Marches boasted that they were never going away from it. + +In the morning they discovered that their windows looked out on the +grand-ducal museum, with a gardened space before and below its +classicistic bulk, where, in a whim of the weather, the gay flowers were +full of sun. In a pleasant illusion of taking it unawares, March strolled +up through the town; but Weimar was as much awake at that hour as at any +of the twenty-four, and the tranquillity of its streets, where he +encountered a few passers several blocks apart, was their habitual mood. +He came promptly upon two objects which he would willingly have shunned: +a 'denkmal' of the Franco-German war, not so furiously bad as most German +monuments, but antipathetic and uninteresting, as all patriotic monuments +are; and a woman-and-dog team. In the shock from this he was sensible +that he had not seen any woman-and-dog teams for some time, and he +wondered by what civic or ethnic influences their distribution was so +controlled that they should have abounded in Hamburg, Leipsic, and +Carlsbad, and wholly ceased in Nuremberg, Ansbach, and Wurzburg, to +reappear again in Weimar, though they seemed as characteristic of all +Germany as the ugly denkmals to her victories over France. + +The Goethe and Schiller monument which he had glimpsed the night before +was characteristic too, but less offensively so. German statues at the +best are conscious; and the poet-pair, as the inscription calls them, +have the air of showily confronting posterity with their clasped hands, +and of being only partially rapt from the spectators. But they were more +unconscious than any other German statues that March had seen, and he +quelled a desire to ask Goethe, as he stood with his hand on Schiller's +shoulder, and looked serenely into space far above one of the typical +equipages of his country, what he thought of that sort of thing. But upon +reflection he did not know why Goethe should be held personally +responsible for the existence of the woman-and-dog team. He felt that he +might more reasonably attribute to his taste the prevalence of classic +profiles which he began to note in the Weimar populace. This could be a +sympathetic effect of that passion for the antique which the poet brought +back with him from his sojourn in Italy; though many of the people, +especially the children, were bow-legged. Perhaps the antique had: begun +in their faces, and had not yet got down to their legs; in any case they +were charming children, and as a test of their culture, he had a mind to +ask a little girl if she could tell him where the statue of Herder was, +which he thought he might as well take in on his ramble, and so be done +with as many statues as he could. She answered with a pretty regret in +her tender voice, "That I truly cannot," and he was more satisfied than +if she could, for he thought it better to be a child and honest, than to +know where any German statue was. + +He easily found it for himself in the place which is called the Herder +Platz after it. He went into the Peter and Paul Church there; where +Herder used to preach sermons, sometimes not at all liked by the nobility +and gentry for their revolutionary tendency; the sovereign was shielded +from the worst effects of his doctrine by worshipping apart from other +sinners in a glazed gallery. Herder is buried in the church, and when you +ask where, the sacristan lifts a wooden trap-door in the pavement, and +you think you are going down into the crypt, but you are only to see +Herder's monumental stone, which is kept covered so to save it from +passing feet. Here also is the greatest picture of that great soul Luke +Kranach, who had sincerity enough in his paining to atone for all the +swelling German sculptures in the world. It is a crucifixion, and the +cross is of a white birch log, such as might have been cut out of the +Weimar woods, shaved smooth on the sides, with the bark showing at the +edges. Kranach has put himself among the spectators, and a stream of +blood from the side of the Savior falls in baptism upon the painter's +head. He is in the company of John the Baptist and Martin Luther; Luther +stands with his Bible open, and his finger on the line, "The blood of +Jesus cleanseth us." + +Partly because he felt guilty at doing all these things without his wife, +and partly because he was now very hungry, March turned from them and got +back to his hotel, where she was looking out for him from their open +window. She had the air of being long domesticated there, as she laughed +down at seeing him come; and the continued brilliancy of the weather +added to the illusion of home. + +It was like a day of late spring in Italy or America; the sun in that +gardened hollow before the museum was already hot enough to make him glad +of the shelter of the hotel. The summer seemed to have come back to +oblige them, and when they learned that they were to see Weimar in a +festive mood because this was Sedan Day, their curiosity, if not their +sympathy, accepted the chance gratefully. But they were almost moved to +wish that the war had gone otherwise when they learned that all the +public carriages were engaged, and they must have one from a stable if +they wished to drive after breakfast. Still it was offered them for such +a modest number of marks, and their driver proved so friendly and +conversable, that they assented to the course of history, and were more +and more reconciled as they bowled along through the grand-ducal park +beside the waters of the classic Ilm. + +The waters of the classic Ilm are sluggish and slimy in places, and in +places clear and brooklike, but always a dull dark green in color. They +flow in the shadow of pensive trees, and by the brinks of sunny meadows, +where the after-math wanders in heavy windrows, and the children sport +joyously over the smooth-mown surfaces in all the freedom that there is +in Germany. At last, after immemorial appropriation the owners of the +earth are everywhere expropriated, and the people come into the pleasure +if not the profit of it. At last, the prince, the knight, the noble +finds, as in his turn the plutocrat will find, that his property is not +for him, but for all; and that the nation is to enjoy what he takes from +it and vainly thinks to keep from it. Parks, pleasaunces, gardens, set +apart for kings, are the play-grounds of the landless poor in the Old +World, and perhaps yield the sweetest joy of privilege to some state-sick +ruler, some world-weary princess, some lonely child born to the solitude +of sovereignty, as they each look down from their palace windows upon the +leisure of overwork taking its little holiday amidst beauty vainly +created for the perpetual festival of their empty lives. + +March smiled to think that in this very Weimar, where sovereignty had +graced and ennobled itself as nowhere else in the world by the +companionship of letters and the arts, they still were not hurrying first +to see the palace of a prince, but were involuntarily making it second to +the cottage of a poet. But in fact it is Goethe who is forever the prince +in Weimar. His greatness blots out its history, his name fills the city; +the thought of him is its chiefest imitation and largest hospitality. The +travellers remembered, above all other facts of the grand-ducal park, +that it was there he first met Christiane Vulpius, beautiful and young, +when he too was beautiful and young, and took her home to be his love, to +the just and lasting displeasure of Fran von Stein, who was even less +reconciled when, after eighteen years of due reflection, the love of +Goethe and Christiane became their marriage. They, wondered just where it +was he saw the young girl coming to meet him as the Grand-Duke's minister +with an office-seeking petition from her brother, Goethe's brother +author, long famed and long forgotten for his romantic tale of "Rinaldo +Rinaldini." + +They had indeed no great mind, in their American respectability, for that +rather matter-of-fact and deliberate liaison, and little as their +sympathy was for the passionless intellectual intrigue with the Frau von +Stein, it cast no halo of sentiment about the Goethe cottage to suppose +that there his love-life with Christiane began. Mrs. March even resented +the fact, and when she learned later that it was not the fact at all, she +removed it from her associations with the pretty place almost +indignantly. + +In spite of our facile and multiple divorces we Americans are worshipers +of marriage, and if a great poet, the minister of a prince, is going to +marry a poor girl, we think he had better not wait till their son is +almost of age. Mrs. March would not accept as extenuating circumstances +the Grand-Duke's godfatherhood, or Goethe's open constancy to Christiane, +or the tardy consecration of their union after the French sack of, +Weimar, when the girl's devotion had saved him from the rudeness of the +marauding soldiers. For her New England soul there were no degrees in +such guilt; and, perhaps there are really not so many as people have +tried to think, in their deference to Goethe's greatness. But certainly +the affair was not so simple for a grand-ducal minister of world-wide +renown, and he might well have felt its difficulties, for he could not +have been proof against the censorious public opinion of Weimar, or the +yet more censorious private opinion of Fran von Stein. + +On that lovely Italo-American morning no ghost of these old dead +embarrassments lingered within or without the Goethe garden-house. The +trees which the poet himself planted flung a sun-shot shadow upon it, and +about its feet basked a garden of simple flowers, from which the sweet +lame girl who limped through the rooms and showed them, gathered a +parting nosegay for her visitors. The few small livingrooms were above +the ground-floor, with kitchen and offices below in the Italian fashion; +in one of the little chambers was the camp-bed which Goethe carried with +him on his journeys through Italy; and in the larger room at the front +stood the desk where he wrote, with the chair before it from which he +might just have risen. + +All was much more livingly conscious of the great man gone than the proud +little palace in the town, which so abounds with relics and memorials of +him. His library, his study, his study table, with everything on it just +as he left it when + + "Cadde la stanca mana" + +are there, and there is the death-chair facing the window, from which he +gasped for "more light" at last. The handsome, well-arranged rooms are +full of souvenirs of his travel, and of that passion for Italy which he +did so much to impart to all German hearts, and whose modern waning +leaves its records here of an interest pathetically, almost amusingly, +faded. They intimate the classic temper to which his mind tended more and +more, and amidst the multitude of sculptures, pictures, prints, drawings, +gems, medals, autographs, there is the sense of the many-mindedness, the +universal taste, for which he found room in little Weimar, but not in his +contemporaneous Germany. But it is all less keenly personal, less +intimate than the simple garden-house, or else, with the great troop of +people going through it, and the custodians lecturing in various voices +and languages to the attendant groups, the Marches had it less to +themselves, and so imagined him less in it. + + + + +LX. + +All palaces have a character of tiresome unlivableness which is common to +them everywhere, and very probably if one could meet their proprietors in +them one would as little remember them apart afterwards as the palaces +themselves. It will not do to lift either houses or men far out of the +average; they become spectacles, ceremonies; they cease to have charm, to +have character, which belong to the levels of life, where alone there are +ease and comfort, and human nature may be itself, with all the little +delightful differences repressed in those who represent and typify. + +As they followed the custodian through the grand-ducal Residenz at +Weimar, March felt everywhere the strong wish of the prince who was +Goethe's friend to ally himself with literature, and to be human at least +in the humanities. He came honestly by his passion for poets; his mother +had known it in her time, and Weimar was the home of Wieland and of +Herder before the young Grand-Duke came back from his travels bringing +Goethe with him, and afterwards attracting Schiller. The story of that +great epoch is all there in the Residenz, told as articulately as a +palace can. + +There are certain Poets' Rooms, frescoed with illustrations of Goethe, +Schiller, and Wieland; there is the room where Goethe and the Grand-Duke +used to play chess together; there is the conservatory opening from it +where they liked to sit and chat; everywhere in the pictures and +sculptures, the engraving and intaglios, are the witnesses of the tastes +they shared, the love they both had for Italy, and for beautiful Italian +things. The prince was not so great a prince but that he could very +nearly be a man; the court was perhaps the most human court that ever +was; the Grand-Duke and the grand poet were first boon companions, and +then monarch and minister working together for the good of the country; +they were always friends, and yet, as the American saw in the light of +the New World, which he carried with him, how far from friends! At best +it was make-believe, the make-believe of superiority and inferiority, the +make-believe of master and man, which could only be the more painful and +ghastly for the endeavor of two generous spirits to reach and rescue each +other through the asphyxiating unreality; but they kept up the show of +equality faithfully to the end. Goethe was born citizen of a free +republic, and his youth was nurtured in the traditions of liberty; he was +one of the greatest souls of any time, and he must have known the +impossibility of the thing they pretended; but he died and made no sign, +and the poet's friendship with the prince has passed smoothly into +history as one of the things that might really be. They worked and played +together; they dined and danced, they picnicked and poetized, each on his +own side of the impassable gulf; with an air of its not being there which +probably did not deceive their contemporaries so much as posterity. + +A part of the palace was of course undergoing repair; and in the gallery +beyond the conservatory a company of workmen were sitting at a table +where they had spread their luncheon. They were somewhat subdued by the +consciousness of their august environment; but the sight of them was +charming; they gave a kindly interest to the place which it had wanted +before; and which the Marches felt again in another palace where the +custodian showed them the little tin dishes and saucepans which the +German Empress Augusta and her sisters played with when they were +children. The sight of these was more affecting even than the withered +wreaths which they had left on the death-bed of their mother, and which +are still mouldering there. + +This was in the Belvedere, the country house on the height overlooking +Weimar, where the grand-ducal family spend the month of May, and where +the stranger finds himself amid overwhelming associations of Goethe, +although the place is so full of relics and memorials of the owners. It +seemed in fact to be a storehouse for the wedding-presents of the whole +connection, which were on show in every room; Mrs. March hardly knew +whether they heightened the domestic effect or took from it; but they +enabled her to verify with the custodian's help certain royal +intermarriages which she had been in doubt about before. + +Her zeal for these made such favor with him that he did not spare them a +portrait of all those which March hoped to escape; he passed them over, +scarcely able to stand, to the gardener, who was to show them the +open-air theatre where Goethe used to take part in the plays. + +The Natur-Theater was of a classic ideal, realized in the trained vines +and clipped trees which formed the coulisses. There was a grassy space +for the chorus and the commoner audience, and then a few semicircular +gradines cut in the turf, one alcove another, where the more honored +spectators sat. Behind the seats were plinths bearing the busts of +Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder. It was all very pretty, and if +ever the weather in Weimar was dry enough to permit a performance, it +must have been charming to see a play in that open day to which the drama +is native, though in the late hours it now keeps in the thick air of +modern theatres it has long forgotten the fact. It would be difficult to +be Greek under a German sky, even when it was not actually raining, but +March held that with Goethe's help it might have been done at Weimar, and +his wife and he proved themselves such enthusiasts for the Natur-Theater +that the walnut-faced old gardener who showed it put together a sheaf of +the flowers that grew nearest it and gave them to Mrs. March for a +souvenir. + +They went for a cup of tea to the cafe which looks, as from another +eyebrow of the hill, out over lovely little Weimar in the plain below. In +a moment of sunshine the prospect was very smiling; but their spirits +sank over their tea when it came; they were at least sorry they had not +asked for coffee. Most of the people about them were taking beer, +including the pretty girls of a young ladies' school, who were there with +their books and needle-work, in the care of one of the teachers, +apparently for the afternoon. + +Mrs. March perceived that they were not so much engaged with their books +or their needle-work but they had eyes for other things, and she followed +the glances of the girls till they rested upon the people at a table +somewhat obliquely to the left. These were apparently a mother and +daughter, and they were listening to a young man who sat with his back to +Mrs. March, and leaned low over the table talking to them. They were both +smiling radiantly, and as the girl smiled she kept turning herself from +the waist up, and slanting her face from this side to that, as if to make +sure that every one saw her smiling. + +Mrs. March felt her husband's gaze following her own, and she had just +time to press her finger firmly on his arm and reduce his cry of +astonishment to the hoarse whisper in which he gasped, "Good gracious! +It's the pivotal girl!" + +At the same moment the girl rose with her mother, and with the young man, +who had risen too, came directly toward the Marches on their way out of +the place without noticing them, though Burnamy passed so near that Mrs. +March could almost have touched him. + +She had just strength to say, "Well, my dear! That was the cut direct." + +She said this in order to have her husband reassure her. "Nonsense! He +never saw us. Why didn't you speak to him?" + +"Speak to him? I never shall speak to him again. No! This is the last of +Mr. Burnamy for me. I shouldn't have minded his not recognizing us, for, +as you say, I don't believe he saw us; but if he could go back to such a +girl as that, and flirt with her, after Miss Triscoe, that's all I wish +to know of him. Don't you try to look him up, Basil! I'm glad-yes, I'm +glad he doesn't know how Stoller has come to feel about him; he deserves +to suffer, and I hope he'll keep on suffering: You were quite right, my +dear--and it shows how true your instinct is in such things (I don't call +it more than instinct)--not to tell him what Stoller said, and I don't +want you ever should." + +She had risen in her excitement, and was making off in such haste that +she would hardly give him time to pay for their tea, as she pulled him +impatiently to their carriage. + +At last he got a chance to say, "I don't think I can quite promise that; +my mind's been veering round in the other direction. I think I shall tell +him." + +"What! After you've seen him flirting with that girl? Very well, then, +you won't, my dear; that's all! He's behaving very basely to Agatha." + +"What's his flirtation with all the girls in the universe to do with my +duty to him? He has a right to know what Stoller thinks. And as to his +behaving badly toward Miss Triscoe, how has he done it? So far as you +know, there is nothing whatever between them. She either refused him +outright, that last night in Carlsbad, or else she made impossible +conditions with him. Burnamy is simply consoling himself, and I don't +blame him." + +"Consoling himself with a pivotal girl!" cried Mrs. March. + +"Yes, with a pivotal girl. Her pivotality may be a nervous idiosyncrasy, +or it may be the effect of tight lacing; perhaps she has to keep turning +and twisting that way to get breath. But attribute the worst motive: say +it is to make people look at her! Well, Burnamy has a right to look with +the rest; and I am not going to renounce him because he takes refuge with +one pretty girl from another. It's what men have been doing from the +beginning of time." + +"Oh, I dare say!" + +"Men," he went on, "are very delicately constituted; very peculiarly. +They have been known to seek the society of girls in general, of any +girl, because some girl has made them happy; and when some girl has made +them unhappy, they are still more susceptible. Burnamy may be merely +amusing himself, or he may be consoling himself; but in either case I +think the pivotal girl has as much right to him as Miss Triscoe. She had +him first; and I'm all for her." + + + + +LXI. + +Burnamy came away from seeing the pivotal girl and her mother off on the +train which they were taking that evening for Frankfort and Hombourg, and +strolled back through the Weimar streets little at ease with himself. +While he was with the girl and near her he had felt the attraction by +which youth impersonally draws youth, the charm which mere maid has for +mere man; but once beyond the range of this he felt sick at heart and +ashamed. He was aware of having used her folly as an anodyne for the pain +which was always gnawing at him, and he had managed to forget it in her +folly, but now it came back, and the sense that he had been reckless of +her rights came with it. He had done his best to make her think him in +love with her, by everything but words; he wondered how he could be such +an ass, such a wicked ass, as to try making her promise to write to him +from Frankfort; he wished never to see her again, and he wished still +less to hear from her. It was some comfort to reflect that she had not +promised, but it was not comfort enough to restore him to such +fragmentary self-respect as he had been enjoying since he parted with +Agatha Triscoe in Carlsbad; he could not even get back to the resentment +with which he had been staying himself somewhat before the pivotal girl +unexpectedly appeared with her mother in Weimar. + +It was Sedan Day, but there was apparently no official observance of the +holiday, perhaps because the Grand-Duke was away at the manoeuvres, with +all the other German princes. Burnamy had hoped for some voluntary +excitement among the people, at least enough to warrant him in making a +paper about Sedan Day in Weimar, which he could sell somewhere; but the +night was falling, and there was still no sign of popular rejoicing over +the French humiliation twenty-eight years before, except in the multitude +of Japanese lanterns which the children were everywhere carrying at the +ends of sticks. Babies had them in their carriages, and the effect of the +floating lights in the winding, up-and-down-hill streets was charming +even to Burnamy's lack-lustre eyes. He went by his hotel and on to a cafe +with a garden, where there was a patriotic, concert promised; he supped +there, and then sat dreamily behind his beer, while the music banged and +brayed round him unheeded. + +Presently he heard a voice of friendly banter saying in English, "May I +sit at your table?" and he saw an ironical face looking down on him. +"There doesn't seem any other place." + +"Why, Mr. March!" Burnamy sprang up and wrung the hand held out to him, +but he choked with his words of recognition; it was so good to see this +faithful friend again, though he saw him now as he had seen him last, +just when he had so little reason to be proud of himself. + +March settled his person in the chair facing Burnamy, and then glanced +round at the joyful jam of people eating and drinking, under a firmament +of lanterns. "This is pretty," he said, "mighty pretty. I shall make Mrs. +March sorry for not coming, when I go back." + +"Is Mrs. March--she is--with you--in Weimar?" Burnamy asked stupidly. + +March forbore to take advantage of him. "Oh, yes. We saw you out at +Belvedere this afternoon. Mrs. March thought for a moment that you meant +not to see us. A woman likes to exercise her imagination in those little +flights." + +"I never dreamed of your being there--I never saw--" Burnamy began. + +"Of course not. Neither did Mrs. Etkins, nor Miss Etkins; she was looking +very pretty. Have you been here some time?" + +"Not long. A week or so. I've been at the parade at Wurzburg." + +"At Wurzburg! Ah, how little the world is, or how large Wurzburg is! We +were there nearly a week, and we pervaded the place. But there was a +great crowd for you to hide in from us. What had I better take?" A waiter +had come up, and was standing at March's elbow. "I suppose I mustn't sit +here without ordering something?" + +"White wine and selters," said Burnamy vaguely. + +"The very thing! Why didn't I think of it? It's a divine drink: it +satisfies without filling. I had it a night or two before we left home, +in the Madison Square Roof Garden. Have you seen 'Every Other Week' +lately?" + +"No," said Burnamy, with more spirit than he had yet shown. + +"We've just got our mail from Nuremberg. The last number has a poem in it +that I rather like." March laughed to see the young fellow's face light +up with joyful consciousness. "Come round to my hotel, after you're tired +here, and I'll let you see it. There's no hurry. Did you notice the +little children with their lanterns, as you came along? It's the gentlest +effect that a warlike memory ever came to. The French themselves couldn't +have minded those innocents carrying those soft lights on the day of +their disaster. You ought to get something out of that, and I've got a +subject in trust for you from Rose Adding. He and his mother were at +Wurzburg; I'm sorry to say the poor little chap didn't seem very well. +They've gone to Holland for the sea air." March had been talking for +quantity in compassion of the embarrassment in which Burnamy seemed +bound; but he questioned how far he ought to bring comfort to the young +fellow merely because he liked him. So far as he could make out, Burnamy +had been doing rather less than nothing to retrieve himself since they +had met; and it was by an impulse that he could not have logically +defended to Mrs. March that he resumed. "We found another friend of yours +in Wurzburg: Mr. Stoller." + +"Mr. Stoller?" Burnamy faintly echoed. + +"Yes; he was there to give his daughters a holiday during the manoeuvres; +and they made the most of it. He wanted us to go to the parade with his +family but we declined. The twins were pretty nearly the death of General +Triscoe." + +Again Burnamy echoed him. "General Triscoe?" + +"Ah, yes: I didn't tell you. General Triscoe and his daughter had come on +with Mrs. Adding and Rose. Kenby--you remember Kenby, On the +Norumbia?--Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family party; +and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with him and +his girls." + +Now that he was launched, March rather enjoyed letting himself go. He did +not know what he should say to Mrs. March when he came to confess having +told Burnamy everything before she got a chance at him; he pushed on +recklessly, upon the principle, which probably will not hold in morals, +that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. "I have a message for +you from Mr. Stoller." + +"For me?" Burnamy gasped. + +"I've been wondering how I should put it, for I hadn't expected to see +you. But it's simply this: he wants you to know--and he seemed to want me +to know--that he doesn't hold you accountable in the way he did. He's +thought it all over, and he's decided that he had no right to expect you +to save him from his own ignorance where he was making a show of +knowledge. As he said, he doesn't choose to plead the baby act. He says +that you're all right, and your place on the paper is open to you." + +Burnamy had not been very prompt before, but now he seemed braced for +instant response. "I think he's wrong," he said, so harshly that the +people at the next table looked round. "His feeling as he does has +nothing to do with the fact, and it doesn't let me out." + +March would have liked to take him in his arms; he merely said, "I think +you're quite right, as to that. But there's such a thing as forgiveness, +you know. It doesn't change the nature of what you've done; but as far as +the sufferer from it is concerned, it annuls it." + +"Yes, I understand that. But I can't accept his forgiveness if I hate +him." + +"But perhaps you won't always hate him. Some day you may have a chance to +do him a good turn. It's rather banale; but there doesn't seem any other +way. Well, I have given you his message. Are you going with me to get +that poem?" + +When March had given Burnamy the paper at his hotel, and Burnamy had put +it in his pocket, the young man said he thought he would take some +coffee, and he asked March to join him in the dining-room where they had +stood talking. + +"No, thank you," said the elder, "I don't propose sitting up all night, +and you'll excuse me if I go to bed now. It's a little informal to leave +a guest--" + +"You're not leaving a guest! I'm at home here. I'm staying in this hotel +too." + +March said, "Oh!" and then he added abruptly, "Good-night," and went up +stairs under the fresco of the five poets. + +"Whom were you talking with below?" asked Mrs. March through the door +opening into his room from hers. + +"Burnamy," he answered from within. "He's staying in this house. He let +me know just as I was going to turn him out for the night. It's one of +those little uncandors of his that throw suspicion on his honesty in +great things." + +"Oh! Then you've been telling him," she said, with a mental bound high +above and far beyond the point. + +"Everything." + +"About Stoller, too?" + +"About Stoller and his daughters, and Mrs. Adding and Rose and Kenby and +General Triscoe--and Agatha." + +"Very well. That's what I call shabby. Don't ever talk to me again about +the inconsistencies of women. But now there's something perfectly +fearful." + +"What is it?" + +"A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find +rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow. He isn't well, and +they're coming. And I've telegraphed them to come here. Now what do you +say?" + + + + +LXII. + +They could see no way out of the trouble, and Mrs. March could not resign +herself to it till her husband suggested that she should consider it +providential. This touched the lingering superstition in which she had +been ancestrally taught to regard herself as a means, when in a very +tight place, and to leave the responsibility with the moral government of +the universe. As she now perceived, it had been the same as ordered that +they should see Burnamy under such conditions in the afternoon that they +could not speak to him, and hear where he was staying; and in an inferior +degree it had been the same as ordered that March should see him in the +evening and tell him everything, so that she should know just how to act +when she saw him in the morning. If he could plausibly account for the +renewal of his flirtation with Miss Elkins, or if he seemed generally +worthy apart from that, she could forgive him. + +It was so pleasant when he came in at breakfast with his well-remembered +smile, that she did not require from him any explicit defence. While they +talked she was righting herself in an undercurrent of drama with Miss +Triscoe, and explaining to her that they could not possibly wait over for +her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for Berlin, as +they had made all their plans. It was not easy, even in drama where one +has everything one's own way, to prove that she could not without impiety +so far interfere with the course of Providence as to prevent Miss +Triscoe's coming with her father to the same hotel where Burnamy was +staying. She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had not known he +was staying there when she telegraphed them where to come, and that in +the absence of any open confidence from Miss Triscoe she was not obliged +to suppose that his presence would be embarrassing. + +March proposed leaving her with Burnamy while he went up into the town +and interviewed the house of Schiller, which he had not done yet; and as +soon as he got himself away she came to business, breaking altogether +from the inner drama with Miss Triscoe and devoting herself to Burnamy. +They had already got so far as to have mentioned the meeting with the +Triscoes in Wurzburg, and she said: "Did Mr. March tell you they were +coming here? Or, no! We hadn't heard then. Yes, they are coming +to-morrow. They may be going to stay some time. She talked of Weimar when +we first spoke of Germany on the ship." Burnamy said nothing, and she +suddenly added, with a sharp glance, "They wanted us to get them rooms, +and we advised their coming to this house." He started very +satisfactorily, and "Do you think they would be comfortable, here?" she +pursued. + +"Oh, yes, very. They can have my room; it's southeast; I shall be going +into other quarters." She did not say anything; and "Mrs. March," he +began again, "what is the use of my beating about the bush? You must know +what I went back to Carlsbad for, that night--" + +"No one ever told--" + +"Well, you must have made a pretty good guess. But it was a failure. I +ought to have failed, and I did. She said that unless her father liked +it--And apparently he hasn't liked it." Burnamy smiled ruefully. + +"How do you know? She didn't know where you were!" + +"She could have got word to me if she had had good news for me. They've +forwarded other letters from Pupp's. But it's all right; I had no +business to go back to Carlsbad. Of course you didn't know I was in this +house when you told them to come; and I must clear out. I had better +clear out of Weimar, too." + +"No, I don't think so; I have no right to pry into your affairs, but--" + +"Oh, they're wide enough open!" + +"And you may have changed your mind. I thought you might, when I saw you +yesterday at Belvedere--" + +"I was only trying to make bad worse." + +"Then I think the situation has changed entirely through what Mr. Stoller +said to Mr. March." + +"I can't see how it has. I committed an act of shabby treachery, and I'm +as much to blame as if he still wanted to punish me for it." + +"Did Mr. March say that to you?" + +"No; I said that to Mr. March; and he couldn't answer it, and you can't. +You're very good, and very kind, but you can't answer it." + +"I can answer it very well," she boasted, but she could find nothing +better to say than, "It's your duty to her to see her and let her know." + +"Doesn't she know already?" + +"She has a right to know it from you. I think you are morbid, Mr. +Burnamy. You know very well I didn't like your doing that to Mr. Stoller. +I didn't say so at the time, because you seemed to feel it enough +yourself. But I did like your owning up to it," and here Mrs. March +thought it time to trot out her borrowed battle-horse again. "My husband +always says that if a person owns up to an error, fully and faithfully, +as you've always done, they make it the same in its consequences to them +as if it had never been done." + +"Does Mr. March say that?" asked Burnamy with a relenting smile. + +"Indeed he does!" + +Burnamy hesitated; then he asked, gloomily again: + +"And what about the consequences to the other fellow?" + +"A woman," said Mrs. March, "has no concern with them. And besides, I +think you've done all you could to save Mr. Stoller from the +consequences." + +"I haven't done anything." + +"No matter. You would if you could. I wonder," she broke off, to prevent +his persistence at a point where her nerves were beginning to give way, +"what can be keeping Mr. March?" + +Nothing much more important, it appeared later, than the pleasure of +sauntering through the streets on the way to the house of Schiller, and +looking at the pretty children going to school, with books under their +arms. It was the day for the schools to open after the long summer +vacation, and there was a freshness of expectation in the shining faces +which, if it could not light up his own graybeard visage, could at least +touch his heart: + +When he reached the Schiller house he found that it was really not the +Schiller house, but the Schiller flat, of three or four rooms, one flight +up, whose windows look out upon the street named after the poet. The +whole place is bare and clean; in one corner of the large room fronting +the street stands Schiller's writing-table, with his chair before it; +with the foot extending toward this there stands, in another corner, the +narrow bed on which he died; some withered wreaths on the pillow frame a +picture of his deathmask, which at first glance is like his dead face +lying there. It is all rather tasteless, and all rather touching, and the +place with its meagre appointments, as compared with the rich Goethe +house, suggests that personal competition with Goethe in which Schiller +is always falling into the second place. Whether it will be finally so +with him in literature it is too early to ask of time, and upon other +points eternity will not be interrogated. "The great, Goethe and the good +Schiller," they remain; and yet, March reasoned, there was something good +in Goethe and something great, in Schiller. + +He was so full of the pathos of their inequality before the world that he +did not heed the warning on the door of the pastry-shop near the Schiller +house, and on opening it he bedaubed his hand with the fresh paint on it. +He was then in such a state, that he could not bring his mind to bear +upon the question of which cakes his wife would probably prefer, and he +stood helplessly holding up his hand till the good woman behind the +counter discovered his plight, and uttered a loud cry of compassion. She +ran and got a wet napkin, which she rubbed with soap, and then she +instructed him by word and gesture to rub his hand upon it, and she did +not leave him till his rescue was complete. He let her choose a variety +of the cakes for him, and came away with a gay paper bag full of them, +and with the feeling that he had been in more intimate relations with the +life of Weimar than travellers are often privileged to be. He argued from +the instant and intelligent sympathy of the pastry woman a high grade of +culture in all classes; and he conceived the notion of pretending to Mrs. +March that he had got these cakes from, a descendant of Schiller. + +His deceit availed with her for the brief moment in which she always, +after so many years' experience of his duplicity, believed anything he +told her. They dined merrily together at their hotel, and then Burnamy +came down to the station with them and was very comfortable to March in +helping him to get their tickets and their baggage registered. The train +which was to take them to Halle, where they were to change for Berlin, +was rather late, and they had but ten minutes after it came in before it +would start again. Mrs. March was watching impatiently at the window of +the waiting-room for the dismounting passengers to clear the platform and +allow the doors to be opened; suddenly she gave a cry, and turned and ran +into the passage by which the new arrivals were pouring out toward the +superabundant omnibuses. March and Burnamy, who had been talking apart, +mechanically rushed after her and found her kissing Miss Triscoe and +shaking hands with the general amidst a tempest of questions and answers, +from which it appeared that the Triscoes had got tired of staying in +Wurzburg, and had simply come on to Weimar a day sooner than they had +intended. + +The general was rather much bundled up for a day which was mild for a +German summer day, and he coughed out an explanation that he had taken an +abominable cold at that ridiculous parade, and had not shaken it off yet. +He had a notion that change of air would be better for him; it could not +be worse. + +He seemed a little vague as to Burnamy, rather than inimical. While the +ladies were still talking eagerly together in proffer and acceptance of +Mrs. March's lamentations that she should be going away just as Miss +Triscoe was coming, he asked if the omnibus for their hotel was there. He +by no means resented Burnamy's assurance that it was, and he did not +refuse to let him order their baggage, little and large, loaded upon it. +By the time this was done, Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had so far +detached themselves from each other that they could separate after one +more formal expression of regret and forgiveness. With a lament into +which she poured a world of inarticulate emotions, Mrs. March wrenched +herself from the place, and suffered herself, to be pushed toward her +train. But with the last long look which she cast over her shoulder, +before she vanished into the waiting-room, she saw Miss Triscoe and +Burnamy transacting the elaborate politenesses of amiable strangers with +regard to the very small bag which the girl had in her hand. He succeeded +in relieving her of it; and then he led the way out of the station on the +left of the general, while Miss Triscoe brought up the rear. + + + + +LXIII. + +From the window of the train as it drew out Mrs. March tried for a +glimpse of the omnibus in which her proteges were now rolling away +together. As they were quite out of sight in the omnibus, which was +itself out of sight, she failed, but as she fell back against her seat +she treated the recent incident with a complexity and simultaneity of +which no report can give an idea. At the end one fatal conviction +remained: that in everything she had said she had failed to explain to +Miss Triscoe how Burnamy happened to be in Weimar and how he happened to +be there with them in the station. She required March to say how she had +overlooked the very things which she ought to have mentioned first, and +which she had on the point of her tongue the whole time. She went over +the entire ground again to see if she could discover the reason why she +had made such an unaccountable break, and it appeared that she was led to +it by his rushing after her with Burnamy before she had had a chance to +say a word about him; of course she could not say anything in his +presence. This gave her some comfort, and there was consolation in the +fact that she had left them together without the least intention or +connivance, and now, no matter what happened, she could not accuse +herself, and he could not accuse her of match-making. + +He said that his own sense of guilt was so great that he should not dream +of accusing her of anything except of regret that now she could never +claim the credit of bringing the lovers together under circumstances so +favorable. As soon as they were engaged they could join in renouncing her +with a good conscience, and they would probably make this the basis of +their efforts to propitiate the general. + +She said she did not care, and with the mere removal of the lovers in +space, her interest in them began to abate. They began to be of a minor +importance in the anxieties of the change of trains at Halle, and in the +excitement of settling into the express from Frankfort there were moments +when they were altogether forgotten. The car was of almost American +length, and it ran with almost American smoothness; when the conductor +came and collected an extra fare for their seats, the Marches felt that +if the charge had been two dollars instead of two marks they would have +had every advantage of American travel. + +On the way to Berlin the country was now fertile and flat, and now +sterile and flat; near the capital the level sandy waste spread almost to +its gates. The train ran quickly through the narrow fringe of suburbs, +and then they were in one of those vast Continental stations which put +our outdated depots to shame. The good 'traeger' who took possession of +them and their hand-bags, put their boxes on a baggage-bearing drosky, +and then got them another drosky for their personal transportation. This +was a drosky of the first-class, but they would not have thought it so, +either from the vehicle itself, or from the appearance of the driver and +his horses. The public carriages of Germany are the shabbiest in the +world; at Berlin the horses look like old hair trunks and the drivers +like their moth-eaten contents. + +The Marches got no splendor for the two prices they paid, and their +approach to their hotel on Unter den Linden was as unimpressive as the +ignoble avenue itself. It was a moist, cold evening, and the mean, +tiresome street, slopped and splashed under its two rows of small trees, +to which the thinning leaves clung like wet rags, between long lines of +shops and hotels which had neither the grace of Paris nor the grandiosity +of New York. March quoted in bitter derision: + + "Bees, bees, was it your hydromel, + Under the Lindens?" + +and his wife said that if Commonwealth Avenue in Boston could be imagined +with its trees and without their beauty, flanked by the architecture of +Sixth Avenue, with dashes of the west side of Union Square, that would be +the famous Unter den Linden, where she had so resolutely decided that +they would stay while in Berlin. + +They had agreed upon the hotel, and neither could blame the other because +it proved second-rate in everything but its charges. They ate a poorish +table d'hote dinner in such low spirits that March had no heart to get a +rise from his wife by calling her notice to the mouse which fed upon the +crumbs about their feet while they dined. Their English-speaking waiter +said that it was a very warm evening, and they never knew whether this +was because he was a humorist, or because he was lonely and wished to +talk, or because it really was a warm evening, for Berlin. When they had +finished, they went out and drove about the greater part of the evening +looking for another hotel, whose first requisite should be that it was +not on Unter den Linden. What mainly determined Mrs. March in favor of +the large, handsome, impersonal place they fixed upon was the fact that +it was equipped for steam-heating; what determined March was the fact +that it had a passenger-office where when he wished to leave, he could +buy his railroad tickets and have his baggage checked without the +maddening anxiety, of doing it at the station. But it was precisely in +these points that the hotel which admirably fulfilled its other functions +fell short. The weather made a succession of efforts throughout their +stay to clear up cold; it merely grew colder without clearing up, but +this seemed to offer no suggestion of steam for heating their bleak +apartment and the chilly corridors to the management. With the help of a +large lamp which they kept burning night and day they got the temperature +of their rooms up to sixty; there was neither stove nor fireplace, the +cold electric bulbs diffused a frosty glare; and in the vast, stately +dining-room with its vaulted roof, there was nothing to warm them but +their plates, and the handles of their knives and forks, which, by a +mysterious inspiration, were always hot. When they were ready to go, +March experienced from the apathy of the baggage clerk and the reluctance +of the porters a more piercing distress than any he had known at the +railroad stations; and one luckless valise which he ordered sent after +him by express reached his bankers in Paris a fortnight overdue, with an +accumulation of charges upon it outvaluing the books which it contained. + +But these were minor defects in an establishment which had many merits, +and was mainly of the temperament and intention of the large English +railroad hotels. They looked from their windows down into a gardened +square, peopled with a full share of the superabounding statues of Berlin +and frequented by babies and nurse maids who seemed not to mind the cold +any more than the stone kings and generals. The aspect of this square, +like the excellent cooking of the hotel and the architecture of the +imperial capital, suggested the superior civilization of Paris. Even the +rows of gray houses and private palaces of Berlin are in the French +taste, which is the only taste there is in Berlin. The suggestion of +Paris is constant, but it is of Paris in exile, and without the chic +which the city wears in its native air. The crowd lacks this as much as +the architecture and the sculpture; there is no distinction among the men +except for now and then a military figure, and among the women no style +such as relieves the commonplace rash of the New York streets. The +Berliners are plain and ill dressed, both men and women, and even the +little children are plain. Every one is ill dressed, but no one is +ragged, and among the undersized homely folk of the lower classes there +is no such poverty-stricken shabbiness as shocks and insults the sight in +New York. That which distinctly recalls our metropolis is the lofty +passage of the elevated trains intersecting the prospectives of many +streets; but in Berlin the elevated road is carried on massive brick +archways and not lifted upon gay, crazy iron ladders like ours. + +When you look away from this, and regard Berlin on its aesthetic, side +you are again in that banished Paris, whose captive art-soul is made to +serve, so far as it may be enslaved to such an effect, in the celebration +of the German triumph over France. Berlin has never the presence of a +great capital, however, in spite of its perpetual monumental insistence. +There is no streaming movement in broad vistas; the dull looking +population moves sluggishly; there is no show of fine equipages. The +prevailing tone of the city and the sky is gray; but under the cloudy +heaven there is no responsive Gothic solemnity in the architecture. There +are hints of the older German cities in some of the remote and observe +streets, but otherwise all is as new as Boston, which in fact the actual +Berlin hardly antedates. + +There are easily more statues in Berlin than in any other city in the +world, but they only unite in failing to give Berlin an artistic air. +They stand in long rows on the cornices; they crowd the pediments; they +poise on one leg above domes and arches; they shelter themselves in +niches; they ride about on horseback; they sit or lounge on street +corners or in garden walks; all with a mediocrity in the older sort which +fails of any impression. If they were only furiously baroque they would +be something, and it may be from a sense of this that there is a +self-assertion in the recent sculptures, which are always patriotic, more +noisy and bragging than anything else in perennial brass. This offensive +art is the modern Prussian avatar of the old German romantic spirit, and +bears the same relation to it that modern romanticism in literature bears +to romance. It finds its apotheosis in the monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I., +a vast incoherent group of swelling and swaggering bronze, commemorating +the victory of the first Prussian Emperor in the war with the last French +Emperor, and avenging the vanquished upon the victors by its ugliness. +The ungainly and irrelevant assemblage of men and animals backs away from +the imperial palace, and saves itself too soon from plunging over the +border of a canal behind it, not far from Rauch's great statue of the +great Frederic. To come to it from the simplicity and quiet of that noble +work is like passing from some exquisite masterpiece of naturalistic +acting to the rant and uproar of melodrama; and the Marches stood stunned +and bewildered by its wild explosions. + +When they could escape they found themselves so convenient to the +imperial palace that they judged best to discharge at once the obligation +to visit it which must otherwise weigh upon them. They entered the court +without opposition from the sentinel, and joined other strangers +straggling instinctively toward a waiting-room in one corner of the +building, where after they had increased to some thirty, a custodian took +charge of them, and led them up a series of inclined plains of brick to +the state apartments. In the antechamber they found a provision of +immense felt over-shoes which they were expected to put on for their +passage over the waxed marquetry of the halls. These roomy slippers were +designed for the accommodation of the native boots; and upon the mixed +company of foreigners the effect was in the last degree humiliating. The +women's skirts some what hid their disgrace, but the men were openly put +to shame, and they shuffled forward with their bodies at a convenient +incline like a company of snow-shoers. In the depths of his own abasement +March heard a female voice behind him sighing in American accents, "To +think I should be polishing up these imperial floors with my republican +feet!" + +The protest expressed the rebellion which he felt mounting in his own +heart as they advanced through the heavily splendid rooms, in the +historical order of the family portraits recording the rise of the +Prussian sovereigns from Margraves to Emperors. He began to realize here +the fact which grew open him more and more that imperial Germany is not +the effect of a popular impulse but of a dynastic propensity. There is +nothing original in the imperial palace, nothing national; it embodies +and proclaims a powerful personal will, and in its adaptations of French +art it appeals to no emotion in the German witness nobler than his pride +in the German triumph over the French in war. March found it tiresome +beyond the tiresome wont of palaces, and he gladly shook off the sense of +it with his felt shoes. "Well," he confided to his wife when they were +fairly out-of-doors, "if Prussia rose in the strength of silence, as +Carlyle wants us to believe, she is taking it out in talk now, and tall +talk." + +"Yes, isn't she!" Mrs. March assented, and with a passionate desire for +excess in a bad thing, which we all know at times, she looked eagerly +about her for proofs of that odious militarism of the empire, which ought +to have been conspicuous in the imperial capital; but possibly because +the troops were nearly all away at the manoeuvres, there were hardly more +in the streets than she had sometimes seen in Washington. Again the +German officers signally failed to offer her any rudeness when she met +them on the side-walks. There were scarcely any of them, and perhaps that +might have been the reason why they were not more aggressive; but a whole +company of soldiers marching carelessly up to the palace from the +Brandenburg gate, without music, or so much style as our own militia +often puts on, regarded her with inoffensive eyes so far as they looked +at her. She declared that personally there was nothing against the +Prussians; even when in uniform they were kindly and modest-looking men; +it was when they got up on pedestals, in bronze or marble, that they, +began to bully and to brag. + + + + +LXIV. + +The dinner which the Marches got at a restaurant on Unter den Linden +almost redeemed the avenue from the disgrace it had fallen into with +them. It was, the best meal they had yet eaten in Europe, and as to fact +and form was a sort of compromise between a French dinner and an English +dinner which they did not hesitate to pronounce Prussian. The waiter who +served it was a friendly spirit, very sensible of their intelligent +appreciation of the dinner; and from him they formed a more respectful +opinion of Berlin civilization than they had yet held. After the manner +of strangers everywhere they judged the country they were visiting from +such of its inhabitants as chance brought them in contact with; and it +would really be a good thing for nations that wish to stand well with the +world at large to look carefully to the behavior of its cabmen and car +conductors, its hotel clerks and waiters, its theatre-ticket sellers and +ushers, its policemen and sacristans, its landlords and salesmen; for by +these rather than by its society women and its statesmen and divines, is +it really judged in the books of travellers; some attention also should +be paid to the weather, if the climate is to be praised. In the railroad +cafe at Potsdam there was a waiter so rude to the Marches that if they +had not been people of great strength of character he would have undone +the favorable impression the soldiers and civilians of Berlin generally +had been at such pains to produce in them; and throughout the week of +early September which they passed there, it rained so much and so +bitterly, it was so wet and so cold, that they might have come away +thinking it's the worst climate in the world, if it had not been for a +man whom they saw in one of the public gardens pouring a heavy stream +from his garden hose upon the shrubbery already soaked and shuddering in +the cold. But this convinced them that they were suffering from weather +and not from the climate, which must really be hot and dry; and they went +home to their hotel and sat contentedly down in a temperature of sixty +degrees. The weather, was not always so bad; one day it was dry cold +instead of wet cold, with rough, rusty clouds breaking a blue sky; +another day, up to eleven in the forenoon, it was like Indian summer; +then it changed to a harsh November air; and then it relented and ended +so mildly, that they hired chairs in the place before the imperial palace +for five pfennigs each, and sat watching the life before them. Motherly +women-folk were there knitting; two American girls in chairs near them +chatted together; some fine equipages, the only ones they saw in Berlin, +went by; a dog and a man (the wife who ought to have been in harness was +probably sick, and the poor fellow was forced to take her place) passed +dragging a cart; some schoolboys who had hung their satchels upon the low +railing were playing about the base of the statue of King William III. in +the joyous freedom of German childhood. + +They seemed the gayer for the brief moments of sunshine, but to the +Americans, who were Southern by virtue of their sky, the brightness had a +sense of lurking winter in it, such as they remembered feeling on a sunny +day in Quebec. The blue heaven looked sad; but they agreed that it fitly +roofed the bit of old feudal Berlin which forms the most ancient wing of +the Schloss. This was time-blackened and rude, but at least it did not +try to be French, and it overhung the Spree which winds through the city +and gives it the greatest charm it has. In fact Berlin, which is +otherwise so grandiose without grandeur and so severe without +impressiveness, is sympathetic wherever the Spree opens it to the sky. +The stream is spanned by many bridges, and bridges cannot well be +unpicturesque, especially if they have statues to help them out. The +Spree abounds in bridges, and it has a charming habit of slow hay-laden +barges; at the landings of the little passenger-steamers which ply upon +it there are cafes and summer-gardens, and these even in the inclement +air of September suggested a friendly gayety. + +The Marches saw it best in the tour of the elevated road in Berlin which +they made in an impassioned memory of the elevated road in New York. The +brick viaducts which carry this arch the Spree again and again in their +course through and around the city, but with never quite such spectacular +effects as our spidery tressels, achieve. The stations are pleasant, +sometimes with lunch-counters and news-stands, but have not the +comic-opera-chalet prettiness of ours, and are not so frequent. The road +is not so smooth, the cars not so smooth-running or so swift. On the +other hand they are comfortably cushioned, and they are never +overcrowded. The line is at times above, at times below the houses, and +at times on a level with them, alike in city and in suburbs. The train +whirled out of thickly built districts, past the backs of the old houses, +into outskirts thinly populated, with new houses springing up without +order or continuity among the meadows and vegetable-gardens, and along +the ready-made, elm-planted avenues, where wooden fences divided the +vacant lots. Everywhere the city was growing out over the country, in +blocks and detached edifices of limestone, sandstone, red and yellow +brick, larger or smaller, of no more uniformity than our suburban +dwellings, but never of their ugliness or lawless offensiveness. + +In an effort for the intimate life of the country March went two +successive mornings for his breakfast to the Cafe Bauer, which has some +admirable wall-printings, and is the chief cafe on Unter den Linden; but +on both days there were more people in the paintings than out of them. +The second morning the waiter who took his order recognized him and +asked, "Wie gestern?" and from this he argued an affectionate constancy +in the Berliners, and a hospitable observance of the tastes of strangers. +At his bankers, on the other hand, the cashier scrutinized his signature +and remarked that it did not look like the signature in his letter of +credit, and then he inferred a suspicious mind in the moneyed classes of +Prussia; as he had not been treated with such unkind doubt by Hebrew +bankers anywhere, he made a mental note that the Jews were politer than +the Christians in Germany. In starting for Potsdam he asked a traeger +where the Potsdam train was and the man said, "Dat train dare," and in +coming back he helped a fat old lady out of the car, and she thanked him +in English. From these incidents, both occurring the same day in the same +place, the inference of a widespread knowledge of our language in all +classes of the population was inevitable. + +In this obvious and easy manner he studied contemporary civilization in +the capital. He even carried his researches farther, and went one rainy +afternoon to an exhibition of modern pictures in a pavilion of the +Thiergarten, where from the small attendance he inferred an indifference +to the arts which he would not ascribe to the weather. One evening at a +summer theatre where they gave the pantomime of the 'Puppenfee' and the +operetta of 'Hansel and Gretel', he observed that the greater part of the +audience was composed of nice plain young girls and children, and he +noted that there was no sort of evening dress; from the large number of +Americans present he imagined a numerous colony in Berlin, where they +mast have an instinctive sense of their co-nationality, since one of them +in the stress of getting his hat and overcoat when they all came out, +confidently addressed him in English. But he took stock of his +impressions with his wife, and they seemed to him so few, after all, that +he could not resist a painful sense of isolation in the midst of the +environment. + +They made a Sunday excursion to the Zoological Gardens in the +Thiergarten, with a large crowd of the lower classes, but though they had +a great deal of trouble in getting there by the various kinds of +horsecars and electric cars, they did not feel that they had got near to +the popular life. They endeavored for some sense of Berlin society by +driving home in a drosky, and on the way they passed rows of beautiful +houses, in French and Italian taste, fronting the deep, damp green park +from the Thiergartenstrasse, in which they were confident cultivated and +delightful people lived; but they remained to the last with nothing but +their unsupported conjecture. + + + + +LXV. + +Their excursion to Potsdam was the cream of their sojourn in Berlin. They +chose for it the first fair morning, and they ran out over the flat sandy +plains surrounding the capital, and among the low hills surrounding +Potsdam before it actually began to rain. + +They wished immediately to see Sans Souci for the great Frederick's sake, +and they drove through a lively shower to the palace, where they waited +with a horde of twenty-five other tourists in a gusty colonnade before +they were led through Voltaire's room and Frederick's death chamber. + +The French philosopher comes before the Prussian prince at Sans Souci +even in the palatial villa which expresses the wilful caprice of the +great Frederick as few edifices have embodied the whims or tastes of +their owners. The whole affair is eighteenth-century French, as the +Germans conceived it. The gardened terrace from which the low, one-story +building, thickly crusted with baroque sculptures, looks down into a +many-colored parterre, was luxuriantly French, and sentimentally French +the colonnaded front opening to a perspective of artificial ruins, with +broken pillars lifting a conscious fragment of architrave against the +sky. Within, all again was French in the design, the decoration and the +furnishing. At that time there, was in fact no other taste, and +Frederick, who despised and disused his native tongue, was resolved upon +French taste even in his intimate companionship. The droll story of his +coquetry with the terrible free spirit which he got from France to be his +guest is vividly reanimated at Sans Souci, where one breathes the very +air in which the strangely assorted companions lived, and in which they +parted so soon to pursue each other with brutal annoyance on one side, +and with merciless mockery on the other. Voltaire was long ago revenged +upon his host for all the indignities he suffered from him in their +comedy; he left deeply graven upon Frederick's fame the trace of those +lacerating talons which he could strike to the quick; and it is the +singular effect of this scene of their brief friendship that one feels +there the pre-eminence of the wit in whatever was most important to +mankind. + +The rain had lifted a little and the sun shone out on the bloom of the +lovely parterre where the Marches profited by a smiling moment to wander +among the statues and the roses heavy with the shower. Then they walked +back to their carriage and drove to the New Palace, which expresses in +differing architectural terms the same subjection to an alien ideal of +beauty. It is thronged without by delightfully preposterous rococco +statues, and within it is rich in all those curiosities and memorials of +royalty with which palaces so well know how to fatigue the flesh and +spirit of their visitors. + +The Marches escaped from it all with sighs and groans of relief, and +before they drove off to see the great fountain of the Orangeries, they +dedicated a moment of pathos to the Temple of Friendship which Frederick +built in memory of unhappy Wilhelmina of Beyreuth, the sister he loved in +the common sorrow of their wretched home, and neglected when he came to +his kingdom. It is beautiful in its rococco way, swept up to on its +terrace by most noble staircases, and swaggered over by baroque +allegories of all sorts: Everywhere the statues outnumbered the visitors, +who may have been kept away by the rain; the statues naturally did not +mind it. + +Sometime in the midst of their sight-seeing the Marches had dinner in a +mildewed restaurant, where a compatriotic accent caught their ear in a +voice saying to the waiter, "We are in a hurry." They looked round and +saw that it proceeded from the pretty nose of a young American girl, who +sat with a party of young American girls at a neighboring table. Then +they perceived that all the people in that restaurant were Americans, +mostly young girls, who all looked as if they were in a hurry. But +neither their beauty nor their impatience had the least effect with the +waiter, who prolonged the dinner at his pleasure, and alarmed the Marches +with the misgiving that they should not have time for the final palace on +their list. + +This was the palace where the father of Frederick, the mad old Frederick +William, brought up his children with that severity which Solomon urged +but probably did not practise. It is a vast place, but they had time for +it all, though the custodian made the most of them as the latest comers +of the day, and led them through it with a prolixity as great as their +waiter's. He was a most friendly custodian, and when he found that they +had some little notion of what they wanted to see, he mixed zeal with his +patronage, and in a manner made them his honored guests. They saw +everything but the doorway where the faithful royal father used to lie in +wait for his children and beat them, princes and princesses alike, with +his knobby cane as they came through. They might have seen this doorway +without knowing it; but from the window overlooking the parade-ground +where his family watched the manoeuvres of his gigantic grenadiers, they +made sure of just such puddles as Frederick William forced his family to +sit with their feet in, while they dined alfresco on pork and cabbage; +and they visited the room of the Smoking Parliament where he ruled his +convives with a rod of iron, and made them the victims of his bad jokes. +The measuring-board against which he took the stature of his tall +grenadiers is there, and one room is devoted to those masterpieces which +he used to paint in the agonies of gout. His chef d'oeuvre contains a +figure with two left feet, and there seemed no reason why it might not. +have had three. In another room is a small statue of Carlyle, who did so +much to rehabilitate the house which the daughter of it, Wilhelmina, did +so much to demolish in the regard of men. + +The palace is now mostly kept for guests, and there is a chamber where +Napoleon slept, which is not likely to be occupied soon by any other +self-invited guest of his nation. It is perhaps to keep the princes of +Europe humble that hardly a palace on the Continent is without the +chamber of this adventurer, who, till he stooped to be like them, was +easily their master. Another democracy had here recorded its invasion in +the American stoves which the custodian pointed out in the corridor when +Mrs. March, with as little delay as possible, had proclaimed their +country. The custodian professed an added respect for them from the fact, +and if he did not feel it, no doubt he merited the drink money which they +lavished on him at parting. + +Their driver also was a congenial spirit, and when he let them out of his +carriage at the station, he excused the rainy day to them. He was a merry +fellow beyond the wont of his nation, and he-laughed at the bad weather, +as if it had been a good joke on them. + +His gayety, and the red sunset light, which shone on the stems of the +pines on the way back to Berlin, contributed to the content in which they +reviewed their visit to Potsdam. They agreed that the place was perfectly +charming, and that it was incomparably expressive of kingly will and +pride. These had done there on the grand scale what all the German +princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and emulation of +French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a historical growth as +at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, in which there was +often the curious fascination of insanity. + +They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the +Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, where all the portraits, effigies, +personal belongings and memorials of that gifted, eccentric race are +gathered and historically disposed. The princes of the mighty line who +stand out from the rest are Frederick the Great and his infuriate. +father; and in the waxen likeness of the son, a small thin figure, +terribly spry, and a face pitilessly alert, appears something of the +madness which showed in the life of the sire. + +They went through many rooms in which the memorials of the kings and +queens, the emperors and empresses were carefully ordered, and felt no +kindness except before the relics relating to the Emperor Frederick and +his mother. In the presence of the greatest of the dynasty they +experienced a kind of terror which March expressed, when they were safely +away, in the confession of his joy that those people were dead. + + + + +LXVI. + +The rough weather which made Berlin almost uninhabitable to Mrs. March +had such an effect with General Triscoe at Weimar that under the orders +of an English-speaking doctor he retreated from it altogether and went to +bed. Here he escaped the bronchitis which had attacked him, and his +convalesence left him so little to complain of that he could not always +keep his temper. In the absence of actual offence, either from his +daughter or from Burnamy, his sense of injury took a retroactive form; it +centred first in Stoller and the twins; then it diverged toward Rose +Adding, his mother and Kenby, and finally involved the Marches in the +same measure of inculpation; for they had each and all had part, directly +or indirectly, in the chances that brought on his cold. + +He owed to Burnamy the comfort of the best room in the hotel, and he was +constantly dependent upon his kindness; but he made it evident that he +did not over-value Burnamy's sacrifice and devotion, and that it was not +an unmixed pleasure, however great a convenience, to have him about. In +giving up his room, Burnamy had proposed going out of the hotel +altogether; but General Triscoe heard of this with almost as great +vexation as he had accepted the room. He besought him not to go, but so +ungraciously that his daughter was ashamed, and tried to atone for his +manner by the kindness of her own. + +Perhaps General Triscoe would not have been without excuse if he were not +eager to have her share with destitute merit the fortune which she had +hitherto shared only with him. He was old, and certain luxuries had +become habits if not necessaries with him. Of course he did not say this +to himself; and still less did he say it to her. But he let her see that +he did not enjoy the chance which had thrown them again in such close +relations with Burnamy, and he did pot hide his belief that the Marches +were somehow to blame for it. This made it impossible for her to write at +once to Mrs. March as she had promised; but she was determined that it +should not make her unjust to Burnamy. She would not avoid him; she would +not let anything that had happened keep her from showing that she felt +his kindness and was glad of his help. + +Of course they knew no one else in Weimar, and his presence merely as a +fellow-countryman would have been precious. He got them a doctor, against +General Triscoe's will; he went for his medicines; he lent him books and +papers; he sat with him and tried to amuse him. But with the girl he +attempted no return to the situation at Carlsbad; there is nothing like +the delicate pride of a young man who resolves to forego unfair advantage +in love. + +The day after their arrival, when her father was making up for the sleep +he had lost by night, she found herself alone in the little reading-room +of the hotel with Burnamy for the first time, and she said: "I suppose +you must have been all over Weimar by this time." + +"Well, I've been here, off and on, almost a month. It's an interesting +place. There's a good deal of the old literary quality left." + +"And you enjoy that! I saw"--she added this with a little unnecessary +flush--"your poem in the paper you lent papa." + +"I suppose I ought to have kept that back. But I couldn't." He laughed, +and she said: + +"You must find a great deal of inspiration in such a literary place." + +"It isn't lying about loose, exactly." Even in the serious and perplexing +situation in which he found himself he could not help being amused with +her unliterary notions of literature, her conventional and commonplace +conceptions of it. They had their value with him as those of a more +fashionable world than his own, which he believed was somehow a greater +world. At the same time he believed that she was now interposing them +between the present and the past, and forbidding with them any return to +the mood of their last meeting in Carlsbad. He looked at her ladylike +composure and unconsciousness, and wondered if she could be the same +person and the same person as they who lost themselves in the crowd that +night and heard and said words palpitant with fate. Perhaps there had +been no such words; perhaps it was all a hallucination. He must leave her +to recognize that it was reality; till she did so, he felt bitterly that +there was nothing for him but submission and patience; if she never did +so, there was nothing for him but acquiescence. + +In this talk and in the talks they had afterwards she seemed willing +enough to speak of what had happened since: of coming on to Wurzburg with +the Addings and of finding the Marches there; of Rose's collapse, and of +his mother's flight seaward with him in the care of Kenby, who was so +fortunately going to Holland, too. He on his side told her of going to +Wurzburg for the manoeuvres, and they agreed that it was very strange +they had not met. + +She did not try to keep their relations from taking the domestic +character which was inevitable, and it seemed to him that this in itself +was significant of a determination on her part that was fatal to his +hopes. With a lover's indefinite power of blinding himself to what is +before his eyes, he believed that if she had been more diffident of him, +more uneasy in his presence, he should have had more courage; but for her +to breakfast unafraid with him, to meet him at lunch and dinner in the +little dining-room where they were often the only guests, and always the +only English-speaking guests, was nothing less than prohibitive. + +In the hotel service there was one of those men who are porters in this +world, but will be angels in the next, unless the perfect goodness of +their looks, the constant kindness of their acts, belies them. The +Marches had known and loved the man in their brief stay, and he had been +the fast friend of Burnamy from the moment they first saw each other at +the station. He had tenderly taken possession of General Triscoe on his +arrival, and had constituted himself the nurse and keeper of the +irascible invalid, in the intervals of going to the trains, with a zeal +that often relieved his daughter and Burnamy. The general in fact +preferred him to either, and a tacit custom grew up by which when August +knocked at his door, and offered himself in his few words of serviceable +English, that one of them who happened to be sitting with the general +gave way, and left him in charge. The retiring watcher was then apt to +encounter the other watcher on the stairs, or in the reading-room, or in +the tiny, white-pebbled door-yard at a little table in the shade of the +wooden-tubbed evergreens. From the habit of doing this they one day +suddenly formed the habit of going across the street to that gardened +hollow before and below the Grand-Ducal Museum. There was here a bench in +the shelter of some late-flowering bush which the few other frequenters +of the place soon recognized as belonging to the young strangers, so that +they would silently rise and leave it to them when they saw them coming. +Apparently they yielded not only to their right, but to a certain +authority which resides in lovers, and which all other men, and +especially all other women, like to acknowledge and respect. + +In the absence of any civic documents bearing upon the affair it is +difficult to establish the fact that this was the character in which +Agatha and Burnamy were commonly regarded by the inhabitants of Weimar. +But whatever their own notion of their relation was, if it was not that +of a Brant and a Brautigam, the people of Weimar would have been puzzled +to say what it was. It was known that the gracious young lady's father, +who would naturally have accompanied them, was sick, and in the fact that +they were Americans much extenuation was found for whatever was +phenomenal in their unencumbered enjoyment of each other's society. + +If their free American association was indistinguishably like the peasant +informality which General Triscoe despised in the relations of Kenby and +Mrs. Adding, it is to be said in his excuse that he could not be fully +cognizant of it, in the circumstances, and so could do nothing to prevent +it. His pessimism extended to his health; from the first he believed +himself worse than the doctor thought him, and he would have had some +other physician if he had not found consolation in their difference of +opinion and the consequent contempt which he was enabled to cherish for +the doctor in view of the man's complete ignorance of the case. In proof +of his own better understanding of it, he remained in bed some time after +the doctor said he might get up. + +Nearly ten days had passed before he left his room, and it was not till +then that he clearly saw how far affairs had gone with his daughter and +Burnamy, though even then his observance seemed to have anticipated +theirs. He found them in a quiet acceptance of the fortune which had +brought them together, so contented that they appeared to ask nothing +more of it. The divine patience and confidence of their youth might +sometimes have had almost the effect of indifference to a witness who had +seen its evolution from the moods of the first few days of their reunion +in Weimar. To General Triscoe, however, it looked like an understanding +which had been made without reference to his wishes, and had not been +directly brought to his knowledge. + +"Agatha," he said, after due note of a gay contest between her and +Burnamy over the pleasure and privilege of ordering his supper sent to +his room when he had gone back to it from his first afternoon in the open +air, "how long is that young man going to stay in Weimar?" + +"Why, I don't know!" she answered, startled from her work of beating the +sofa pillows into shape, and pausing with one of them in her hand. "I +never asked him." She looked down candidly into his face where he sat in +an easy-chair waiting for her arrangement of the sofa. "What makes you +ask?" + +He answered with another question. "Does he know that we had thought of +staying here?" + +"Why, we've always talked of that, haven't we? Yes, he knows it. Didn't +you want him to know it, papa? You ought to have begun on the ship, then. +Of course I've asked him what sort of place it was. I'm sorry if you +didn't want me to." + +"Have I said that? It's perfectly easy to push on to Paris. Unless--" + +"Unless what?" Agatha dropped the pillow, and listened respectfully. But +in spite of her filial attitude she could not keep her youth and strength +and courage from quelling the forces of the elderly man. + +He said querulously, "I don't see why you take that tone with me. You +certainly know what I mean. But if you don't care to deal openly with me, +I won't ask you." He dropped his eyes from her face, and at the same time +a deep blush began to tinge it, growing up from her neck to her forehead. +"You must know--you're not a child," he continued, still with averted +eyes, "that this sort of thing can't go on... It must be something else, +or it mustn't be anything at all. I don't ask you for your confidence, +and you know that I've never sought to control you." + +This was not the least true, but Agatha answered, either absently or +provisionally, "No." + +"And I don't seek to do so now. If you have nothing that you wish to tell +me--" + +He waited, and after what seemed a long time, she asked as if she had not +heard him, "Will you lie down a little before your supper, papa?" + +"I will lie down when I feel like it," he answered. "Send August with the +supper; he can look after me." + +His resentful tone, even more than his words, dismissed her, but she left +him without apparent grievance, saying quietly, "I will send August." + + + + +LXVII. + +Agatha did not come down to supper with Burnamy. She asked August, when +she gave him her father's order, to have a cup of tea sent to her room, +where, when it came, she remained thinking so long that it was rather +tepid by the time she drank it. + +Then she went to her window, and looked out, first above and next below. +Above, the moon was hanging over the gardened hollow before the Museum +with the airy lightness of an American moon. Below was Burnamy behind the +tubbed evergreens, sitting tilted in his chair against the house wall, +with the spark of his cigar fainting and flashing like an American +firefly. Agatha went down to the door, after a little delay, and seemed +surprised to find him there; at least she said, "Oh!" in a tone of +surprise. + +Burnamy stood up, and answered, "Nice night." + +"Beautiful!" she breathed. "I didn't suppose the sky in Germany could +ever be so clear." + +"It seems to be doing its best." + +"The flowers over there look like ghosts in the light," she said +dreamily. + +"They're not. Don't you want to get your hat and wrap, and go over and +expose the fraud?" + +"Oh," she answered, as if it were merely a question of the hat and wrap, +"I have them." + +They sauntered through the garden walks for a while, long enough to have +ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if +they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, +they sat down, and she said, "I don't know that I've seen the moon so +clear since we left Carlsbad." At the last word his heart gave a jump +that seemed to lodge it in his throat and kept him from speaking, so that +she could resume without interruption, "I've got something of yours, that +you left at the Posthof. The girl that broke the dishes found it, and +Lili gave it to Mrs. March for you." This did not account for Agatha's +having the thing, whatever it was; but when she took a handkerchief from +her belt, and put out her hand with it toward him, he seemed to find that +her having it had necessarily followed. He tried to take it from her, but +his own hand trembled so that it clung to hers, and he gasped, "Can't you +say now, what you wouldn't say then?" + +The logical sequence was no more obvious than be fore; but she apparently +felt it in her turn as he had felt it in his. She whispered back, "Yes," +and then she could not get out anything more till she entreated in a +half-stifled voice, "Oh, don't!" + +"No, no!" he panted. "I won't--I oughtn't to have done it--I beg your +pardon--I oughtn't to have spoken,--even--I--" + +She returned in a far less breathless and tremulous fashion, but still +between laughing and crying, "I meant to make you. And now, if you're +ever sorry, or I'm ever too topping about anything, you can be perfectly +free to say that you'd never have spoken if you hadn't seen that I wanted +you to." + +"But I didn't see any such thing," he protested. "I spoke because I +couldn't help it any longer." + +She laughed triumphantly. "Of course you think so! And that shows that +you are only a man after all; in spite of your finessing. But I am going +to have the credit of it. I knew that you were holding back because you +were too proud, or thought you hadn't the right, or something. Weren't +you?" She startled him with the sudden vehemence of her challenge: "If +you pretend, that you weren't I shall never forgive you!" + +"But I was! Of course I was. I was afraid--" + +"Isn't that what I said?" She triumphed over him with another laugh, and +cowered a little closer to him, if that could be. + +They were standing, without knowing how they had got to their feet; and +now without any purpose of the kind, they began to stroll again among the +garden paths, and to ask and to answer questions, which touched every +point of their common history, and yet left it a mine of inexhaustible +knowledge for all future time. Out of the sweet and dear delight of this +encyclopedian reserve two or three facts appeared with a present +distinctness. One of these was that Burnamy had regarded her refusal to +be definite at Carlsbad as definite refusal, and had meant never to see +her again, and certainly never to speak again of love to her. Another +point was that she had not resented his coming back that last night, but +had been proud and happy in it as proof of his love, and had always meant +somehow to let him know that she was torched by his trusting her enough +to come back while he was still under that cloud with Mr. Stoller. With +further logic, purely of the heart, she acquitted him altogether of wrong +in that affair, and alleged in proof, what Mr. Stoller had said of it to +Mr. March. Burnamy owned that he knew what Stoller had said, but even in +his present condition he could not accept fully her reading of that +obscure passage of his life. He preferred to put the question by, and +perhaps neither of them cared anything about it except as it related to +the fact that they were now each other's forever. + +They agreed that they must write to Mr. and Mrs. March at once; or at +least, Agatha said, as soon as she had spoken to her father. At her +mention of her father she was aware of a doubt, a fear, in Burnamy which +expressed itself by scarcely more than a spiritual consciousness from his +arm to the hands which she had clasped within it. "He has always +appreciated you," she said courageously, "and I know he will see it in +the right light." + +She probably meant no more than to affirm her faith in her own ability +finally to bring her father to a just mind concerning it; but Burnamy +accepted her assurance with buoyant hopefulness, and said he would see +General Triscoe the first thing in the morning. + +"No, I will see him," she said, "I wish to see him first; he will expect +it of me. We had better go in, now," she added, but neither made any +motion for the present to do so. On the contrary, they walked in the +other direction, and it was an hour after Agatha declared their duty in +the matter before they tried to fulfil it. + +Then, indeed, after they returned to the hotel, she lost no time in going +to her father beyond that which must be given to a long hand-pressure +under the fresco of the five poets on the stairs landing, where her ways +and Burnamy's parted. She went into her own room, and softly opened the +door into her father's and listened. + +"Well?" he said in a sort of challenging voice. + +"Have you been asleep?" she asked. + +"I've just blown out my light. What has kept you?" + +She did not reply categorically. Standing there in the sheltering dark, +she said, "Papa, I wasn't very candid with you, this afternoon. I am +engaged to Mr. Burnamy." + +"Light the candle," said her father. "Or no," he added before she could +do so. "Is it quite settled?" + +"Quite," she answered in a voice that admitted of no doubt. "That is, as +far as it can be, without you." + +"Don't be a hypocrite, Agatha," said the general. "And let me try to get +to sleep. You know I don't like it, and you know I can't help it." + +"Yes," the girl assented. + +"Then go to bed," said the general concisely. + +Agatha did not obey her father. She thought she ought to kiss him, but +she decided that she had better postpone this; so she merely gave him a +tender goodnight, to which he made no response, and shut herself into her +own room, where she remained sitting and staring out into the moonlight, +with a smile that never left her lips. + +When the moon sank below the horizon, the sky was pale with the coming +day, but before it was fairly dawn, she saw something white, not much +greater than some moths, moving before her window. She pulled the valves +open and found it a bit of paper attached to a thread dangling from +above. She broke it loose and in the morning twilight she read the great +central truth of the universe: + +"I love you. L. J. B." + +She wrote under the tremendous inspiration: + +"So do I. Don't be silly. A. T." + +She fastened the paper to the thread again, and gave it a little twitch. +She waited for the low note of laughter which did not fail to flutter +down from above; then she threw herself upon the bed, and fell asleep. + +It was not so late as she thought when she woke, and it seemed, at +breakfast, that Burnamy had been up still earlier. Of the three involved +in the anxiety of the night before General Triscoe was still respited +from it by sleep, but he woke much more haggard than either of the young +people. They, in fact, were not at all haggard; the worst was over, if +bringing their engagement to his knowledge was the worst; the formality +of asking his consent which Burnamy still had to go through was +unpleasant, but after all it was a formality. Agatha told him everything +that had passed between herself and her father, and if it had not that +cordiality on his part which they could have wished it was certainly not +hopelessly discouraging. + +They agreed at breakfast that Burnamy had better have it over as quickly +as possible, and he waited only till August came down with the general's +tray before going up to his room. The young fellow did not feel more at +his ease than the elder meant he should in taking the chair to which the +general waved him from where he lay in bed; and there was no talk wasted +upon the weather between them. + +"I suppose I know what you have come for, Mr. Burnamy," said General +Triscoe in a tone which was rather judicial than otherwise, "and I +suppose you know why you have come." The words certainly opened the way +for Burnamy, but he hesitated so long to take it that the general had +abundant time to add, "I don't pretend that this event is unexpected, but +I should like to know what reason you have for thinking I should wish you +to marry my daughter. I take it for granted that you are attached to each +other, and we won't waste time on that point. Not to beat about the bush, +on the next point, let me ask at once what your means of supporting her +are. How much did you earn on that newspaper in Chicago?" + +"Fifteen hundred dollars," Burnamy answered, promptly enough. + +"Did you earn anything more, say within the last year?" + +"I got three hundred dollars advance copyright for a book I sold to a +publisher." The glory had not yet faded from the fact in Burnamy's mind. + +"Eighteen hundred. What did you get for your poem in March's book?" + +"That's a very trifling matter: fifteen dollars." + +"And your salary as private secretary to that man Stoller?" + +"Thirty dollars a week, and my expenses. But I wouldn't take that, +General Triscoe," said Burnamy. + +General Triscoe, from his 'lit de justice', passed this point in silence. +"Have you any one dependent on you?" + +"My mother; I take care of my mother," answered Burnamy, proudly. + +"Since you have broken with Stoller, what are your prospects?" + +"I have none." + +"Then you don't expect to support my daughter; you expect to live upon +her means." + +"I expect to do nothing of the kind!" cried Burnamy. "I should be +ashamed--I should feel disgraced--I should--I don't ask you--I don't ask +her till I have the means to support her--" + +"If you were very fortunate," continued the general, unmoved by the young +fellow's pain, and unperturbed by the fact that he had himself lived upon +his wife's means as long as she lived, and then upon his daughter's, "if +you went back to Stoller--" + +"I wouldn't go back to him. I don't say he's knowingly a rascal, but he's +ignorantly a rascal, and he proposed a rascally thing to me. I behaved +badly to him, and I'd give anything to undo the wrong I let him do +himself; but I'll never go back to him." + +"If you went back, on your old salary," the general persisted pitilessly, +"you would be very fortunate if you brought your earnings up to +twenty-five hundred a year." + +"Yes--" + +"And how far do you think that would go in supporting my daughter on the +scale she is used to? I don't speak of your mother, who has the first +claim upon you." + +Burnamy sat dumb; and his head which he had lifted indignantly when the +question was of Stoller, began to sink. + +The general went on. "You ask me to give you my daughter when you haven't +money enough to keep her in gowns; you ask me to give her to a +stranger--" + +"Not quite a stranger, General Triscoe," Burnamy protested. "You have +known me for three months at least, and any one who knows me in Chicago +will tell you--" + +"A stranger, and worse than a stranger," the general continued, so +pleased with the logical perfection of his position that he almost +smiled, and certainly softened toward Burnamy. "It isn't a question of +liking you, Mr. Burnamy, but of knowing you; my daughter likes you; so do +the Marches; so does everybody who has met you. I like you myself. You've +done me personally a thousand kindnesses. But I know very little of you, +in spite of our three months' acquaintance; and that little is--But you +shall judge for yourself! You were in the confidential employ of a man +who trusted you, and you let him betray himself." + +"I did. I don't excuse it. The thought of it burns like fire. But it +wasn't done maliciously; it wasn't done falsely; it was done +inconsiderately; and when it was done, it seemed irrevocable. But it +wasn't; I could have prevented, I could have stooped the mischief; and I +didn't! I can never outlive that." + +"I know," said the general relentlessly, "that you have never attempted +any defence. That has been to your credit with me. It inclined me to +overlook your unwarranted course in writing to my daughter, when you told +her you would never see her again. What did you expect me to think, after +that, of your coming back to see her? Or didn't you expect me to know +it?" + +"I expected you to know it; I knew she would tell you. But I don't excuse +that, either. It was acting a lie to come back. All I can say is that I +had to see her again for one last time." + +"And to make sure that it was to be the last time, you offered yourself +to her." + +"I couldn't help doing that." + +"I don't say you could. I don't judge the facts at all. I leave them +altogether to you; and you shall say what a man in my position ought to +say to such a man as you have shown yourself." + +"No, I will say." The door into the adjoining room was flung open, and +Agatha flashed in from it. + +Her father looked coldly at her impassioned face. "Have you been +listening?" he asked. + +"I have been hearing--" + +"Oh!" As nearly as a man could, in bed, General Triscoe shrugged. + +"I suppose I had, a right to be in my own room. I couldn't help hearing; +and I was perfectly astonished at you, papa, the cruel way you went on, +after all you've said about Mr. Stoller, and his getting no more than he +deserved." + +"That doesn't justify me," Burnamy began, but she cut him short almost as +severely as she--had dealt with her father. + +"Yes, it does! It justifies you perfectly! And his wanting you to falsify +the whole thing afterwards, more than justifies you." + +Neither of the men attempted anything in reply to her casuistry; they +both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went +on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and now to the +other. + +"And besides, if it didn't justify you, what you have done yourself +would; and your never denying it, or trying to excuse it, makes it the +same as if you hadn't done it, as far as you are concerned; and that is +all I care for." Burnamy started, as if with the sense of having heard +something like this before, and with surprise at hearing it now; and she +flushed a little as she added tremulously, "And I should never, never +blame you for it, after that; it's only trying to wriggle out of things +which I despise, and you've never done that. And he simply had to come +back," she turned to her father, "and tell me himself just how it was. +And you said yourself, papa--or the same as said--that he had no right to +suppose I was interested in his affairs unless he--unless--And I should +never have forgiven him, if he hadn't told me then that he that he had +come back because he--felt the way he did. I consider that that +exonerated him for breaking his word, completely. If he hadn't broken his +word I should have thought he had acted very cruelly and--and strangely. +And ever since then, he has behaved so nobly, so honorably, so +delicately, that I don't believe he would ever have said anything +again--if I hadn't fairly forced him. Yes! Yes, I did!" she cried at a +movement of remonstrance from Burnamy. "And I shall always be proud of +you for it." Her father stared steadfastly at her, and he only lifted his +eyebrows, for change of expression, when she went over to where Burnamy +stood, and put her hand in his with a certain childlike impetuosity. "And +as for the rest," she declared, "everything I have is his; just as +everything of his would be mine if I had nothing. Or if he wishes to take +me without anything, then he can have me so, and I sha'n't be afraid but +we can get along somehow." She added, "I have managed without a maid, +ever since I left home, and poverty has no terrors for me!" + + + + +LXVIII. + +General Triscoe submitted to defeat with the patience which soldiers +learn. He did not submit amiably; that would have been out of character, +and perhaps out of reason; but Burnamy and Agatha were both so amiable +that they supplied good-humor for all. They flaunted their rapture in her +father's face as little as they could, but he may have found their serene +satisfaction, their settled confidence in their fate, as hard to bear as +a more boisterous happiness would have been. + +It was agreed among them all that they were to return soon to America, +and Burnamy was to find some sort of literary or journalistic employment +in New York. She was much surer than he that this could be done with +perfect ease; but they were of an equal mind that General Triscoe was not +to be disturbed in any of his habits, or vexed in the tenor of his +living; and until Burnamy was at least self-supporting there must be no +talk of their being married. + +The talk of their being engaged was quite enough for the time. It +included complete and minute auto-biographies on both sides, reciprocal +analyses of character, a scientifically exhaustive comparison of tastes, +ideas and opinions; a profound study of their respective chins, noses, +eyes, hands, heights, complexions, moles and freckles, with some account +of their several friends. + +In this occupation, which was profitably varied by the confession of what +they had each thought and felt and dreamt concerning the other at every +instant since they met, they passed rapidly the days which the persistent +anxiety of General Triscoe interposed before the date of their leaving +Weimar for Paris, where it was arranged that they should spend a month +before sailing for New York. Burnamy had a notion, which Agatha approved, +of trying for something there on the New York-Paris Chronicle; and if he +got it they might not go home at once. His gains from that paper had eked +out his copyright from his book, and had almost paid his expenses in +getting the material which he had contributed to it. They were not so +great, however, but that his gold reserve was reduced to less than a +hundred dollars, counting the silver coinages which had remained to him +in crossing and recrossing frontiers. He was at times dimly conscious of +his finances, but he buoyantly disregarded the facts, as incompatible +with his status as Agatha's betrothed, if not unworthy of his character +as a lover in the abstract. + +The afternoon before they were to leave Weimar, they spent mostly in the +garden before the Grand-Ducal Museum, in a conference so important that +when it came on to rain, at one moment, they put up Burnamy's umbrella, +and continued to sit under it rather than interrupt the proceedings even +to let Agatha go back to the hotel and look after her father's packing. +Her own had been finished before dinner, so as to leave her the whole +afternoon for their conference, and to allow her father to remain in +undisturbed possession of his room as long as possible. + +What chiefly remained to be put into the general's trunk were his coats +and trousers, hanging in the closet, and August took these down, and +carefully folded and packed them. Then, to make sure that nothing had +been forgotten, Agatha put a chair into the closet when she came in, and +stood on it to examine the shelf which stretched above the hooks. + +There seemed at first to be nothing on it, and then there seemed to be +something in the further corner, which when it was tiptoed for, proved to +be a bouquet of flowers, not so faded as to seem very old; the blue satin +ribbon which they were tied up with, and which hung down half a yard, was +of entire freshness except far the dust of the shelf where it had lain. + +Agatha backed out into the room with her find in her hand, and examined +it near to, and then at arm's length. August stood by with a pair of the +general's trousers lying across his outstretched hands, and as Agatha +absently looked round at him, she caught a light of intelligence in his +eyes which changed her whole psychological relation to the withered +bouquet. Till then it had been a lifeless, meaningless bunch of flowers, +which some one, for no motive, had tossed up on that dusty shelf in the +closet. At August's smile it became something else. Still she asked +lightly enough, "Was ist loss, August?" + +His smile deepened and broadened. "Fur die Andere," he explained. + +Agatha demanded in English, "What do you mean by feardy ondery?" + +"Oddaw lehdy." + +"Other lady?" August nodded, rejoicing in big success, and Agatha closed +the door into her own room, where the general had been put for the time +so as to be spared the annoyance of the packing; then she sat down with +her hands in her lap, and the bouquet in her hands. "Now, August," she +said very calmly, "I want you to tell me-ich wunsche Sie zu mir +sagen--what other lady--wass andere Dame--these flowers belonged +to--diese Blumen gehorte zu. Verstehen Sie?" + +August nodded brightly, and with German carefully adjusted to Agatha's +capacity, and with now and then a word or phrase of English, he conveyed +that before she and her Herr Father had appeared, there had been in +Weimar another American Fraulein with her Frau Mother; they had not +indeed staid in that hotel, but had several times supped there with the +young Herr Bornahmee, who was occupying that room before her Herr Father. +The young Herr had been much about with these American Damen, driving and +walking with them, and sometimes dining or supping with them at their +hotel, The Elephant. August had sometimes carried notes to them from the +young Herr, and he had gone for the bouquet which the gracious Fraulein +was holding, on the morning of the day that the American Damen left by +the train for Hanover. + +August was much helped and encouraged throughout by the friendly +intelligence of the gracious Fraulein, who smiled radiantly in clearing +up one dim point after another, and who now and then supplied the English +analogues which he sought in his effort to render his German more +luminous. + +At the end she returned to the work of packing, in which she directed +him, and sometimes assisted him with her own hands, having put the +bouquet on the mantel to leave herself free. She took it up again and +carried it into her own room, when she went with August to summon her +father back to his. She bade August say to the young Herr, if he saw him, +that she was going to sup with her father, and August gave her message to +Burnamy, whom he met on the stairs coming down as he was going up with +their tray. + +Agatha usually supped with her father, but that evening Burnamy was less +able than usual to bear her absence in the hotel dining-room, and he went +up to a cafe in the town for his supper. He did not stay long, and when +he returned his heart gave a joyful lift at sight of Agatha looking out +from her balcony, as if she were looking for him. He made her a gay +flourishing bow, lifting his hat high, and she came down to meet him at +the hotel door. She had her hat on and jacket over one arm and she joined +him at once for the farewell walk he proposed in what they had agreed to +call their garden. + +She moved a little ahead of him, and when they reached the place where +they always sat, she shifted her jacket to the other arm and uncovered +the hand in which she had been carrying the withered bouquet. "Here is +something I found in your closet, when I was getting papa's things out." + +"Why, what is it?" he asked innocently, as he took it from her. + +"A bouquet, apparently," she answered, as he drew the long ribbons +through his fingers, and looked at the flowers curiously, with his head +aslant. + +"Where did you get it?" + +"On the shelf." + +It seemed a long time before Burnamy said with a long sigh, as of final +recollection, "Oh, yes," and then he said nothing; and they did not sit +down, but stood looking at each other. + +"Was it something you got for me, and forgot to give me?" she asked in a +voice which would not have misled a woman, but which did its work with +the young man. + +He laughed and said, "Well, hardly! The general has been in the room ever +since you came." + +"Oh, yes. Then perhaps somebody left it there before you had the room?" + +Burnamy was silent again, but at last he said, "No, I flung it up there I +had forgotten all about it." + +"And you wish me to forget about it, too?" Agatha asked in a gayety of +tone that still deceived him. + +"It would only be fair. You made me," he rejoined, and there was +something so charming in his words and way, that she would have been glad +to do it. + +But she governed herself against the temptation and said, "Women are not +good at forgetting, at least till they know what." + +"Oh, I'll tell you, if you want to know," he said with a laugh, and at +the words she--sank provisionally in their accustomed seat. He sat down +beside her, but not so near as usual, and he waited so long before he +began that it seemed as if he had forgotten again. "Why, it's nothing. +Miss Etkins and her mother were here before you came, and this is a +bouquet that I meant to give her at the train when she left. But I +decided I wouldn't, and I threw it onto the shelf in the closet." + +"May I ask why you thought of taking a bouquet to her at the train?" + +"Well, she and her mother--I had been with them a good deal, and I +thought it would be civil." + +"And why did you decide not to be civil?" + +"I didn't want it to look like more than civility." + +"Were they here long?" + +"About a week. They left just after the Marches came." + +Agatha seemed not to heed the answer she had exacted. She sat reclined in +the corner of the seat, with her head drooping. After an interval which +was long to Burnamy she began to pull at a ring on the third finger of +her left hand, absently, as if she did not know what she was doing; but +when she had got it off she held it towards Burnamy and said quietly, "I +think you had better have this again," and then she rose and moved slowly +and weakly away. + +He had taken the ring mechanically from her, and he stood a moment +bewildered; then he pressed after her. + +"Agatha, do you--you don't mean--" + +"Yes," she said, without looking round at his face, which she knew was +close to her shoulder. "It's over. It isn't what you've done. It's what +you are. I believed in you, in spite of what you did to that man--and +your coming back when you said you wouldn't--and--But I see now that what +you did was you; it was your nature; and I can't believe in you any +more." + +"Agatha!" he implored. "You're not going to be so unjust! There was +nothing between you and me when that girl was here! I had a right to--" + +"Not if you really cared for me! Do you think I would have flirted with +any one so soon, if I had cared for you as you pretended you did for me +that night in Carlsbad? Oh, I don't say you're false. But you're +fickle--" + +"But I'm not fickle! From the first moment I saw you, I never cared for +any one but you!" + +"You have strange ways of showing your devotion. Well, say you are not +fickle. Say, that I'm fickle. I am. I have changed my mind. I see that it +would never do. I leave you free to follow all the turning and twisting +of your fancy." She spoke rapidly, almost breathlessly, and she gave him +no chance to get out the words that seemed to choke him. She began to +run, but at the door of the hotel she stopped and waited till he came +stupidly up. "I have a favor to ask, Mr. Burnamy. I beg you will not see +me again, if you can help it before we go to-morrow. My father and I are +indebted to you for too many kindnesses, and you mustn't take any more +trouble on our account. August can see us off in the morning." + +She nodded quickly, and was gone in-doors while he was yet struggling +with his doubt of the reality of what had all so swiftly happened. + +General Triscoe was still ignorant of any change in the status to which +he had reconciled himself with so much difficulty, when he came down to +get into the omnibus for the train. Till then he had been too proud to +ask what had become of Burnamy, though he had wondered, but now he looked +about and said impatiently, "I hope that young man isn't going to keep us +waiting." + +Agatha was pale and worn with sleeplessness, but she said firmly, "He +isn't going, papa. I will tell you in the train. August will see to the +tickets and the baggage." + +August conspired with the traeger to get them a first-class compartment +to themselves. But even with the advantages of this seclusion Agatha's +confidences to her father were not full. She told her father that her +engagement was broken for reasons that did not mean anything very wrong +in Mr. Burnamy but that convinced her they could never be happy together. +As she did not give the reasons, he found a natural difficulty in +accepting them, and there was something in the situation which appealed +strongly to his contrary-mindedness. Partly from this, partly from his +sense of injury in being obliged so soon to adjust himself to new +conditions, and partly from his comfortable feeling of security from an +engagement to which his assent had been forced, he said, "I hope you're +not making a mistake." + +"Oh, no," she answered, and she attested her conviction by a burst of +sobbing that lasted well on the way to the first stop of the train. + + + + +LXIX. + +It would have been always twice as easy to go direct from Berlin to the +Hague through Hanover; but the Marches decided to go by Frankfort and the +Rhine, because they wished to revisit the famous river, which they +remembered from their youth, and because they wished to stop at +Dusseldorf, where Heinrich Heine was born. Without this Mrs. March, who +kept her husband up to his early passion for the poet with a feeling that +she was defending him from age in it, said that their silver wedding +journey would not be complete; and he began himself to think that it +would be interesting. + +They took a sleeping-car for Frankfort and they woke early as people do +in sleeping-cars everywhere. March dressed and went out for a cup of the +same coffee of which sleeping-car buffets have the awful secret in Europe +as well as America, and for a glimpse of the twilight landscape. One gray +little town, towered and steepled and red-roofed within its mediaeval +walls, looked as if it would have been warmer in something more. There +was a heavy dew, if not a light frost, over all, and in places a pale fog +began to lift from the low hills. Then the sun rose without dispersing +the cold, which was afterwards so severe in their room at the Russischer +Hof in Frankfort that in spite of the steam-radiators they sat shivering +in all their wraps till breakfast-time. + +There was no steam on in the radiators, of course; when they implored the +portier for at least a lamp to warm their hands by he turned on all the +electric lights without raising the temperature in the slightest degree. +Amidst these modern comforts they were so miserable that they vowed each +other to shun, as long as they were in Germany, or at least while the +summer lasted, all hotels which were steam-heated and electric-lighted. +They heated themselves somewhat with their wrath, and over their +breakfast they relented so far as to suffer themselves a certain interest +in the troops of all arms beginning to pass the hotel. They were +fragments of the great parade, which had ended the day before, and they +were now drifting back to their several quarters of the empire. Many of +them were very picturesque, and they had for the boys and girls running +before and beside them, the charm which armies and circus processions +have for children everywhere. But their passage filled with cruel anxiety +a large old dog whom his master had left harnessed to a milk-cart before +the hotel door; from time to time he lifted up his voice, and called to +the absentee with hoarse, deep barks that almost shook him from his feet. + +The day continued blue and bright and cold, and the Marches gave the +morning to a rapid survey of the city, glad that it was at least not wet. +What afterwards chiefly remained to them was the impression of an old +town as quaint almost and as Gothic as old Hamburg, and a new town, +handsome and regular, and, in the sudden arrest of some streets, +apparently overbuilt. The modern architectural taste was of course +Parisian; there is no other taste for the Germans; but in the prevailing +absence of statues there was a relief from the most oppressive +characteristic of the imperial capital which was a positive delight. Some +sort of monument to the national victory over France there must have +been; but it must have been unusually inoffensive, for it left no record +of itself in the travellers' consciousness. They were aware of gardened +squares and avenues, bordered by stately dwellings, of dignified civic +edifices, and of a vast and splendid railroad station, such as the state +builds even in minor European cities, but such as our paternal +corporations have not yet given us anywhere in America. They went to the +Zoological Garden, where they heard the customary Kalmucks at their +public prayers behind a high board fence; and as pilgrims from the most +plutrocratic country in the world March insisted that they must pay their +devoirs at the shrine of the Rothschilds, whose natal banking-house they +revered from the outside. + +It was a pity, he said, that the Rothschilds were not on his letter of +credit; he would have been willing to pay tribute to the Genius of +Finance in the percentage on at least ten pounds. But he consoled himself +by reflecting that he did not need the money; and he consoled Mrs. March +for their failure to penetrate to the interior of the Rothschilds' +birthplace by taking her to see the house where Goethe was born. The +public is apparently much more expected there, and in the friendly place +they were no doubt much more welcome than they would have been in the +Rothschild house. Under that roof they renewed a happy moment of Weimar, +which after the lapse of a week seemed already so remote. They wondered, +as they mounted the stairs from the basement opening into a clean little +court, how Burnamy was getting on, and whether it had yet come to that +understanding between him and Agatha, which Mrs. March, at least, had +meant to be inevitable. Then they became part of some such sight-seeing +retinue as followed the custodian about in the Goethe horse in Weimar, +and of an emotion indistinguishable from that of their fellow +sight-seers. They could make sure, afterwards, of a personal pleasure in +a certain prescient classicism of the house. It somehow recalled both the +Goethe houses at Weimar, and it somehow recalled Italy. It is a separate +house of two floors above the entrance, which opens to a little court or +yard, and gives access by a decent stairway to the living-rooms. The +chief of these is a sufficiently dignified parlor or salon, and the most +important is the little chamber in the third story where the poet first +opened his eyes to the light which he rejoiced in for so long a life, and +which, dying, he implored to be with him more. It is as large as his +death-chamber in Weimar, where he breathed this prayer, and it looks down +into the Italian-looking court, where probably he noticed the world for +the first time, and thought it a paved enclosure thirty or forty feet +square. In the birth-room they keep his puppet theatre, and the place is +fairly suggestive of his childhood; later, in his youth, he could look +from the parlor windows and see the house where his earliest love dwelt. +So much remains of Goethe in the place where he was born, and as such +things go, it is not a little. The house is that of a prosperous and +well-placed citizen, and speaks of the senatorial quality in his family +which Heine says he was fond of recalling, rather than the sartorial +quality of the ancestor who, again as Heine says, mended the Republic's +breeches. + +From the Goethe house, one drives by the Goethe monument to the Romer, +the famous town-hall of the old free imperial city which Frankfort once +was; and by this route the Marches drove to it, agreeing with their +coachman that he was to keep as much in the sun as possible. It was still +so cold that when they reached the Romer, and he stopped in a broad blaze +of the only means of heating that they have in Frankfort in the summer, +the travellers were loath to leave it for the chill interior, where the +German emperors were elected for so many centuries. As soon as an emperor +was chosen, in the great hall effigied round with the portraits of his +predecessors, he hurried out in the balcony, ostensibly to show himself +to the people, but really, March contended, to warm up a little in the +sun. The balcony was undergoing repairs that day, and the travellers +could not go out on it; but under the spell of the historic interest of +the beautiful old Gothic place, they lingered in the interior till they +were half-torpid with the cold. Then she abandoned to him the joint duty +of viewing the cathedral, and hurried to their carriage where she basked +in the sun till he came to her. He returned shivering, after a +half-hour's absence, and pretended that she had missed the greatest thing +in the world, but as he could never be got to say just what she had lost, +and under the closest cross-examination could not prove that this +cathedral was memorably different from hundreds of other +fourteenth-century cathedrals, she remained in a lasting content with the +easier part she had chosen. His only definite impression at the cathedral +seemed to be confined to a Bostonian of gloomily correct type, whom he +had seen doing it with his Baedeker, and not letting an object of +interest escape; and his account of her fellow-townsman reconciled Mrs. +March more and more to not having gone. + +As it was warmer out-doors than in-doors at Frankfort, and as the breadth +of sunshine increased with the approach of noon they gave the rest of the +morning to driving about and ignorantly enjoying the outside of many +Gothic churches, whose names even they did not trouble themselves to +learn. They liked the river Main whenever they came to it, because it was +so lately from Wurzburg, and because it was so beautiful with its +bridges, old and new, and its boats of many patterns. They liked the +market-place in front of the Romer not only because it was full of +fascinating bargains in curious crockery and wooden-ware, but because +there was scarcely any shade at all in it. They read from their Baedeker +that until the end of the last century no Jew was suffered to enter the +marketplace, and they rejoiced to find from all appearances that the Jews +had been making up for their unjust exclusion ever since. They were +almost as numerous there as the Anglo-Saxons were everywhere else in +Frankfort. These, both of the English and American branches of the race, +prevailed in the hotel diningroom, where the Marches had a mid-day dinner +so good that it almost made amends for the steam-heating and +electric-lighting. + +As soon as possible after dinner they took the train for Mayence, and ran +Rhinewards through a pretty country into what seemed a milder climate. It +grew so much milder, apparently, that a lady in their compartment to whom +March offered his forward-looking seat, ordered the window down when the +guard came, without asking their leave. Then the climate proved much +colder, and Mrs. March cowered under her shawls the rest of the way, and +would not be entreated to look at the pleasant level landscape near, or +the hills far off. He proposed to put up the window as peremptorily as it +had been put down, but she stayed him with a hoarse whisper, "She may be +another Baroness!" At first he did not know what she meant, then he +remembered the lady whose claims to rank her presence had so poorly +enforced on the way to Wurzburg, and he perceived that his wife was +practising a wise forbearance with their fellow-passengers, and giving +her a chance to turn out any sort of highhote she chose. She failed to +profit by the opportunity; she remained simply a selfish, disagreeable +woman, of no more perceptible distinction than their other +fellow-passenger, a little commercial traveller from Vienna (they +resolved from his appearance and the lettering on his valise that he was +no other), who slept with a sort of passionate intensity all the way to +Mayence. + + + + +LXX. + +The Main widened and swam fuller as they approached the Rhine, and +flooded the low-lying fields in-places with a pleasant effect under a wet +sunset. When they reached the station in Mayence they drove interminably +to the hotel they had chosen on the river-shore, through a city handsomer +and cleaner than any American city they could think of, and great part of +the way by a street of dwellings nobler, Mrs. March owned, than even +Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It was planted, like that, with double +rows of trees, but lacked its green lawns; and at times the sign of +Weinhandlung at a corner, betrayed that there was no such restriction +against shops as keeps the Boston street so sacred. Otherwise they had to +confess once more that any inferior city of Germany is of a more proper +and dignified presence than the most parse-proud metropolis in America. +To be sure, they said, the German towns had generally a thousand years' +start; but all the same the fact galled them. + +It was very bleak, though very beautiful when they stopped before their +hotel on the Rhine, where all their impalpable memories of their visit to +Mayence thirty years earlier precipitated themselves into something +tangible. There were the reaches of the storied and fabled stream with +its boats and bridges and wooded shores and islands; there were the +spires and towers and roofs of the town on either bank crowding to the +river's brink; and there within-doors was the stately portier in gold +braid, and the smiling, bowing, hand-rubbing landlord, alluring them to +his most expensive rooms, which so late in the season he would fain have +had them take. But in a little elevator, that mounted slowly, very +slowly, in the curve of the stairs, they went higher to something lower, +and the landlord retired baked, and left them to the ministrations of the +serving-men who arrived with their large and small baggage. All these +retired in turn when they asked to have a fire lighted in the stove, +without which Mrs. March would never have taken the fine stately rooms, +and sent back a pretty young girl to do it. She came indignant, not +because she had come lugging a heavy hod of coal and a great arm-load of +wood, but because her sense of fitness was outraged by the strange +demand. + +"What!" she cried. "A fire in September!" + +"Yes," March returned, inspired to miraculous aptness in his German by +the exigency, "yes, if September is cold." + +The girl looked at him, and then, either because she thought him mad, or +liked him merry, burst into a loud laugh, and kindled the fire without a +word more. + +He lighted all the reluctant gas-jets in the vast gilt chandelier, and in +less than half an hour the temperature of the place rose to at least +sixty-five Fahrenheit, with every promise of going higher. Mrs. March +made herself comfortable in a deep chair before the stove, and said she +would have her supper there; and she bade him send her just such a supper +of chicken and honey and tea as they had all had in Mayence when they +supped in her aunt's parlor there all those years ago. He wished to +compute the years, but she drove him out with an imploring cry, and he +went down to a very gusty dining-room on the ground-floor, where he found +himself alone with a young English couple and their little boy. They were +friendly, intelligent people, and would have been conversable, +apparently, but for the terrible cold of the husband, which he said he +had contracted at the manoeuvres in Hombourg. March said he was going to +Holland, and the Englishman was doubtful of the warmth which March +expected to find there. He seemed to be suffering from a suspense of +faith as to the warmth anywhere; from time to time the door of the +dining-room self-opened in a silent, ghostly fashion into the court +without, and let in a chilling draught about the legs of all, till the +little English boy got down from his place and shut it. + +He alone continued cheerful, for March's spirits certainly did not rise +when some mumbling Americans came in and muttered over their meat at +another table. He hated to own it, but he had to own that wherever he had +met the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon race together in Europe, the +elder had shown, by a superior chirpiness, to the disadvantage of the +younger. The cast clothes of the old-fashioned British offishness seemed +to have fallen to the American travellers who were trying to be correct +and exemplary; and he would almost rather have had back the old-style +bragging Americans whom he no longer saw. He asked of an agreeable +fellow-countryman whom he found later in the reading-room, what had +become of these; and this compatriot said he had travelled with one only +the day before, who had posed before their whole compartment in his scorn +of the German landscape, the German weather, the German government, the +German railway management, and then turned out an American of German +birth! March found his wife in great bodily comfort when he went back to +her, but in trouble of mind about a clock which she had discovered +standing on the lacquered iron top of the stove. It was a French clock, +of architectural pretensions, in the taste of the first Empire, and it +looked as if it had not been going since Napoleon occupied Mayence early +in the century. But Mrs. March now had it sorely on her conscience where, +in its danger from the heat of the stove, it rested with the weight of +the Pantheon, whose classic form it recalled. She wondered that no one +had noticed it before the fire was kindled, and she required her husband +to remove it at once from the top of the stove to the mantel under the +mirror, which was the natural habitat of such a clock. He said nothing +could be simpler, but when he lifted it, it began to fall all apart, like +a clock in the house of the Hoodoo. Its marble base dropped-off; its +pillars tottered; its pediment swayed to one side. While Mrs. March +lamented her hard fate, and implored him to hurry it together before any +one came, he contrived to reconstruct it in its new place. Then they both +breathed freer, and returned to sit down before the stove. But at the +same moment they both saw, ineffaceably outlined on the lacquered top, +the basal form of the clock. The chambermaid would see it in the morning; +she would notice the removal of the clock, and would make a merit of +reporting its ruin by the heat to the landlord, and in the end they would +be mulcted of its value. Rather than suffer this wrong they agreed to +restore it to its place, and, let it go to destruction upon its own +terms. March painfully rebuilt it where he had found it, and they went to +bed with a bad conscience to worse dreams. + +He remembered, before he slept, the hour of his youth when he was in +Mayence before, and was so care free that he had heard with impersonal +joy two young American voices speaking English in the street under his +window. One of them broke from the common talk with a gay burlesque of +pathos in the line: + + "Oh heavens! she cried, my Heeding country save!" + +and then with a laughing good-night these unseen, unknown spirits of +youth parted and departed. Who were they, and in what different places, +with what cares or ills, had their joyous voices grown old, or fallen +silent for evermore? It was a moonlight night, March remembered, and he +remembered how he wished he were out in it with those merry fellows. + +He nursed the memory and the wonder in his dreaming thought, and he woke +early to other voices under his window. But now the voices, though young, +were many and were German, and the march of feet and the stamp of hooves +kept time with their singing. He drew his curtain and saw the street +filled with broken squads of men, some afoot and some on horseback, some +in uniform and some in civil dress with students' caps, loosely +straggling on and roaring forth that song whose words he could not make +out. At breakfast he asked the waiter what it all meant, and he said that +these were conscripts whose service had expired with the late manoeuvres, +and who were now going home. He promised March a translation of the song, +but he never gave it; and perhaps the sense of their joyful home-going +remained the more poetic with him because its utterance remained +inarticulate. + +March spent the rainy Sunday, on which they had fallen, in wandering +about the little city alone. His wife said she was tired and would sit by +the fire, and hear about Mayence when he came in. He went to the +cathedral, which has its renown for beauty and antiquity, and he there +added to his stock of useful information the fact that the people of +Mayence seemed very Catholic and very devout. They proved it by +preferring to any of the divine old Gothic shrines in the cathedral, an +ugly baroque altar, which was everywhere hung about with votive +offerings. A fashionably dressed young man and young girl sprinkled +themselves with holy water as reverently as if they had been old and +ragged. Some tourists strolled up and down the aisles with their red +guide-books, and studied the objects of interest. A resplendent beadle in +a cocked hat, and with along staff of authority posed before his own +ecclesiastical consciousness in blue and silver. At the high altar a +priest was saying mass, and March wondered whether his consciousness was +as wholly ecclesiastical as the beadle's, or whether somewhere in it he +felt the historical majesty, the long human consecration of the place. + +He wandered at random in the town through streets German and quaint and +old, and streets French and fine and new, and got back to the river, +which he crossed on one of the several handsome bridges. The rough river +looked chill under a sky of windy clouds, and he felt out of season, both +as to the summer travel, and as to the journey he was making. The summer +of life as well as the summer of that year was past. Better return to his +own radiator in his flat on Stuyvesant Square; to the great ugly brutal +town which, if it was not home to him, was as much home to him as to any +one. A longing for New York welled up his heart, which was perhaps really +a wish to be at work again. He said he must keep this from his wife, who +seemed not very well, and whom he must try to cheer up when he returned +to the hotel. + +But they had not a very joyous afternoon, and the evening was no gayer. +They said that if they had not ordered their letters sent to Dusseldorf +they believed they should push on to Holland without stopping; and March +would have liked to ask, Why not push on to America? But he forbore, and +he was afterwards glad that he had done so. + +In the morning their spirits rose with the sun, though the sun got up +behind clouds as usual; and they were further animated by the imposition +which the landlord practised upon them. After a distinct and repeated +agreement as to the price of their rooms he charged them twice as much, +and then made a merit of throwing off two marks out of the twenty he had +plundered them of. + +"Now I see," said Mrs. March, on their way down to the boat, "how +fortunate it was that we baked his clock. You may laugh, but I believe we +were the instruments of justice." + +"Do you suppose that clock was never baked before?" asked her husband. +"The landlord has his own arrangement with justice. When he overcharges +his parting guests he says to his conscience, Well, they baked my clock." + + + + +LXXI. + +The morning was raw, but it was something not to have it rainy; and the +clouds that hung upon the hills and hid their tops were at least as fine +as the long board signs advertising chocolate on the river banks. The +smoke rising from the chimneys of the manufactories of Mayence was not so +bad, either, when one got them in the distance a little; and March liked +the way the river swam to the stems of the trees on the low grassy +shores. It was like the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo in that, +and it was yellow and thick, like the Mississippi, though he thought he +remembered it blue and clear. A friendly German, of those who began to +come aboard more and more at all the landings after leaving Mayence, +assured him that he was right, and that the Rhine was unusually turbid +from the unusual rains. March had his own belief that whatever the color +of the Rhine might be the rains were not unusual, but he could not +gainsay the friendly German. + +Most of the passengers at starting were English and American; but they +showed no prescience of the international affinition which has since +realized itself, in their behavior toward one another. They held silently +apart, and mingled only in the effect of one young man who kept the +Marches in perpetual question whether he was a Bostonian or an +Englishman. His look was Bostonian, but his accent was English; and was +he a Bostonian who had been in England long enough to get the accent, or +was he an Englishman who had been in Boston long enough to get the look? +He wore a belated straw hat, and a thin sack-coat; and in the rush of the +boat through the raw air they fancied him very cold, and longed to offer +him one of their superabundant wraps. At times March actually lifted a +shawl from his knees, feeling sure that the stranger was English and that +he might make so bold with him; then at some glacial glint in the young +man's eye, or at some petrific expression of his delicate face, he felt +that he was a Bostonian, and lost courage and let the shawl sink again. +March tried to forget him in the wonder of seeing the Germans begin to +eat and drink, as soon as they came on boards either from the baskets +they had brought with them, or from the boat's provision. But he +prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events +of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench +when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At +the table d'hote, which was served when the landscape began to be less +interesting, the guests were expected to hand their plates across the +table to the stewards but to keep their knives and forks throughout the +different courses, and at each of these partial changes March felt the +young man's chilly eyes upon him, inculpating him for the +semi-civilization of the management. At such times he knew that he was a +Bostonian. + +The weather cleared, as they descended the river, and under a sky at last +cloudless, the Marches had moments of swift reversion to their former +Rhine journey, when they were young and the purple light of love mantled +the vineyarded hills along the shore, and flushed the castled steeps. The +scene had lost nothing of the beauty they dimly remembered; there were +certain features of it which seemed even fairer and grander than they +remembered. The town of Bingen, where everybody who knows the poem was +more or less born, was beautiful in spite of its factory chimneys, though +there were no compensating castles near it; and the castles seemed as +good as those of the theatre. Here and there some of them had been +restored and were occupied, probably by robber barons who had gone into +trade. Others were still ruinous, and there was now and then such a mere +gray snag that March, at sight of it, involuntarily put his tongue to the +broken tooth which he was keeping for the skill of the first American +dentist. + +For natural sublimity the Rhine scenery, as they recognized once more, +does not compare with the Hudson scenery; and they recalled one point on +the American river where the Central Road tunnels a jutting cliff, which +might very well pass for the rock of the Loreley, where she dreams + + 'Solo sitting by the shores of old romance' + +and the trains run in and out under her knees unheeded. "Still, still you +know," March argued, "this is the Loreley on the Rhine, and not the +Loreley on the Hudson; and I suppose that makes all the difference. +Besides, the Rhine doesn't set up to be sublime; it only means to be +storied and dreamy and romantic and it does it. And then we have really +got no Mouse Tower; we might build one, to be sure." + +"Well, we have got no denkmal, either," said his wife, meaning the +national monument to the German reconquest of the Rhine, which they had +just passed, "and that is something in our favor." + +"It was too far off for us to see how ugly it was," he returned. + +"The denkmal at Coblenz was so near that the bronze Emperor almost rode +aboard the boat." + +He could not answer such a piece of logic as that. He yielded, and began +to praise the orcharded levels which now replaced the vine-purpled slopes +of the upper river. He said they put him in mind of orchards that he had +known in his boyhood; and they, agreed that the supreme charm of travel, +after all, was not in seeing something new and strange, but in finding +something familiar and dear in the heart of the strangeness. + +At Cologne they found this in the tumult of getting ashore with their +baggage and driving from the steamboat landing to the railroad station, +where they were to get their train for Dusseldorf an hour later. The +station swarmed with travellers eating and drinking and smoking; but they +escaped from it for a precious half of their golden hour, and gave the +time to the great cathedral, which was built, a thousand years ago, just +round the corner from the station, and is therefore very handy to it. +Since they saw the cathedral last it had been finished, and now under a +cloudless evening sky, it soared and swept upward like a pale flame. +Within it was a bit over-clean, a bit bare, but without it was one of the +great memories of the race, the record of a faith which wrought miracles +of beauty, at least, if not piety. + +The train gave the Marches another, and last, view of it as they slowly +drew out of the city, and began to run through a level country walled +with far-off hills; past fields of buckwheat showing their stems like +coral under their black tops; past peasant houses changing their wonted +shape to taller and narrower forms; past sluggish streams from which the +mist rose and hung over the meadows, under a red sunset, glassy clear +till the manifold factory chimneys of Dusseldorf stained it with their +dun smoke. + +This industrial greeting seemed odd from the town where Heinrich Heine +was born; but when they had eaten their supper in the capital little +hotel they found there, and went out for a stroll, they found nothing to +remind them of the factories, and much to make them think of the poet. +The moon, beautiful and perfect as a stage moon, came up over the +shoulder of a church as they passed down a long street which they had all +to themselves. Everybody seemed to have gone to bed, but at a certain +corner a girl opened a window above them, and looked out at the moon. + +When they returned to their hotel they found a highwalled garden facing +it, full of black depths of foliage. In the night March woke and saw the +moon standing over the garden, and silvering its leafy tops. This was +really as it should be in the town where the idolized poet of his youth +was born; the poet whom of all others he had adored, and who had once +seemed like a living friend; who had been witness of his first love, and +had helped him to speak it. His wife used to laugh at him for his +Heine-worship in those days; but she had since come to share it, and she, +even more than he, had insisted upon this pilgrimage. He thought long +thoughts of the past, as he looked into the garden across the way, with +an ache for his perished self and the dead companionship of his youth, +all ghosts together in the silvered shadow. The trees shuddered in the +night breeze, and its chill penetrated to him where he stood. + +His wife called to him from her room, "What are you doing?" + +"Oh, sentimentalizing," he answered boldly. + +"Well, you will be sick," she said, and he crept back into bed again. + +They had sat up late, talking in a glad excitement. But he woke early, as +an elderly man is apt to do after broken slumbers, and left his wife +still sleeping. He was not so eager for the poetic interests of the town +as he had been the night before; he even deferred his curiosity for +Heine's birth-house to the instructive conference which he had with his +waiter at breakfast. After all, was not it more important to know +something of the actual life of a simple common class of men than to +indulge a faded fancy for the memory of a genius, which no amount of +associations could feed again to its former bloom? The waiter said he was +a Nuremberger, and had learned English in London where he had served a +year for nothing. Afterwards, when he could speak three languages he got +a pound a week, which seemed low for so many, though not so low as the +one mark a day which he now received in Dusseldorf; in Berlin he paid the +hotel two marks a day. March confided to him his secret trouble as to +tips, and they tried vainly to enlighten each other as to what a just tip +was. + +He went to his banker's, and when he came back he found his wife with her +breakfast eaten, and so eager for the exploration of Heine's birthplace +that she heard with indifference of his failure to get any letters. It +was too soon to expect them, she said, and then she showed him her plan, +which she had been working out ever since she woke. It contained every +place which Heine had mentioned, and she was determined not one should +escape them. She examined him sharply upon his condition, accusing him of +having taken cold when he got up in the night, and acquitting him with +difficulty. She herself was perfectly well, but a little fagged, and they +must have a carriage. + +They set out in a lordly two-spanner, which took up half the little +Bolkerstrasse where Heine was born, when they stopped across the way from +his birthhouse, so that she might first take it all in from the outside +before they entered it. It is a simple street, and not the cleanest of +the streets in a town where most of them are rather dirty. Below the +houses are shops, and the first story of Heine's house is a butcher shop, +with sides of pork and mutton hanging in the windows; above, where the +Heine family must once have lived, a gold-beater and a frame-maker +displayed their signs. + +But did the Heine family really once live there? The house looked so +fresh and new that in spite of the tablet in its front affirming it the +poet's birthplace, they doubted; and they were not reassured by the +people who half halted as they passed, and stared at the strangers, so +anomalously interested in the place. They dismounted, and crossed to the +butcher shop where the provision man corroborated the tablet, but could +not understand their wish to go up stairs. He did not try to prevent +them, however, and they climbed to the first floor above, where a placard +on the door declared it private and implored them not to knock. Was this +the outcome of the inmate's despair from the intrusion of other pilgrims +who had wised to see the Heine dwelling-rooms? They durst not knock and +ask so much, and they sadly descended to the ground-floor, where they +found a butcher boy of much greater apparent intelligence than the +butcher himself, who told them that the building in front was as new as +it looked, and the house where Heine was really born was the old house in +the rear. He showed them this house, across a little court patched with +mangy grass and lilac-bushes; and when they wished to visit it he led the +way. The place was strewn both underfoot and overhead with feathers; it +had once been all a garden out to the street, the boy said, but from +these feathers, as well as the odor which prevailed, and the anxious +behavior of a few hens left in the high coop at one side, it was plain +that what remained of the garden was now a chicken slaughteryard. There +was one well-grown tree, and the boy said it was of the poet's time; but +when he let them into the house, he became vague as to the room where +Heine was born; it was certain only that it was somewhere upstairs and +that it could not be seen. The room where they stood was the +frame-maker's shop, and they bought of him a small frame for a memorial. +They bought of the butcher's boy, not so commercially, a branch of lilac; +and they came away, thinking how much amused Heine himself would have +been with their visit; how sadly, how merrily he would have mocked at +their effort to revere his birthplace. + +They were too old if not too wise to be daunted by their defeat, and they +drove next to the old court garden beside the Rhine where the poet says +he used to play with the little Veronika, and probably did not. At any +rate, the garden is gone; the Schloss was burned down long ago; and +nothing remains but a detached tower in which the good Elector Jan +Wilhelm, of Heine's time, amused himself with his many mechanical +inventions. The tower seemed to be in process of demolition, but an +intelligent workman who came down out of it, was interested in the +strangers' curiosity, and directed them to a place behind the Historical +Museum where they could find a bit of the old garden. It consisted of two +or three low trees, and under them the statue of the Elector by which +Heine sat with the little Veronika, if he really did. Afresh gale blowing +through the trees stirred the bushes that backed the statue, but not the +laurel wreathing the Elector's head, and meeting in a neat point over his +forehead. The laurel wreath is stone, like the rest of the Elector, who +stands there smirking in marble ermine and armor, and resting his baton +on the nose of a very small lion, who, in the exigencies of +foreshortening, obligingly goes to nothing but a tail under the Elector's +robe. + +This was a prince who loved himself in effigy so much that he raised an +equestrian statue to his own renown in the market-place, though he +modestly refused the credit of it, and ascribed its erection to the +affection of his subjects. You see him therein a full-bottomed wig, +mounted on a rampant charger with a tail as big round as a barrel, and +heavy enough to keep him from coming down on his fore legs as long as he +likes to hold them up. It was to this horse's back that Heine clambered +when a small boy, to see the French take formal possession of Dusseldorf; +and he clung to the waist of the bronze Elector, who had just abdicated, +while the burgomaster made a long speech, from the balcony of the +Rathhaus, and the Electoral arms were taken down from its doorway. + +The Rathhaus is a salad-dressing of German gothic and French rococo as to +its architectural style, and is charming in its way, but the Marches were +in the market-place for the sake of that moment of Heine's boyhood. They +felt that he might have been the boy who stopped as he ran before them, +and smacked the stomach of a large pumpkin lying at the feet of an old +market-woman, and then dashed away before she could frame a protest +against the indignity. From this incident they philosophized that the +boys of Dusseldorf are as mischievous at the end of the century as they +were at the beginning; and they felt the fascination that such a +bounteous, unkempt old marketplace must have for the boys of any period. +There were magnificent vegetables of all sorts in it, and if the fruits +were meagre that was the fault of the rainy summer, perhaps. The +market-place was very dirty, and so was the narrow street leading down +from it to the Rhine, which ran swift as a mountain torrent along a +slatternly quay. A bridge of boats crossing the stream shook in the rapid +current, and a long procession of market carts passed slowly over, while +a cluster of scows waited in picturesque patience for the draw to open. + +They saw what a beautiful town that was for a boy to grow up in, and how +many privileges it offered, how many dangers, how many chances for +hairbreadth escapes. They chose that Heine must often have rushed +shrieking joyfully down that foul alley to the Rhine with other boys; and +they easily found a leaf-strewn stretch of the sluggish Dussel, in the +Public Garden, where his playmate, the little Wilhelm, lost his life and +saved the kitten's. They were not so sure of the avenue through which the +poet saw the Emperor Napoleon come riding on his small white horse when +he took possession of the Elector's dominions. But if it was that where +the statue of the Kaiser Wilhelm I. comes riding on a horse led by two +Victories, both poet and hero are avenged there on the accomplished fact. +Defeated and humiliated France triumphs in the badness of that foolish +denkmal (one of the worst in all denkmal-ridden Germany), and the memory +of the singer whom the Hohenzollern family pride forbids honor in his +native place, is immortal in its presence. + +On the way back to their hotel, March made some reflections upon the open +neglect, throughout Germany, of the greatest German lyrist, by which the +poet might have profited if he had been present. He contended that it was +not altogether an effect of Hohenzollern pride, which could not suffer a +joke or two from the arch-humorist; but that Heine had said things of +Germany herself which Germans might well have found unpardonable. He +concluded that it would not do to be perfectly frank with one's own +country. Though, to be sure, there would always be the question whether +the Jew-born Heine had even a step-fatherland in the Germany he loved so +tenderly and mocked so pitilessly. He had to own that if he were a negro +poet he would not feel bound to measure terms in speaking of America, and +he would not feel that his fame was in her keeping. + +Upon the whole he blamed Heine less than Germany and he accused her of +taking a shabby revenge, in trying to forget him; in the heat of his +resentment that there should be no record of Heine in the city where he +was born, March came near ignoring himself the fact that the poet +Freiligrath was also born there. As for the famous Dusseldorf school of +painting, which once filled the world with the worst art, he rejoiced +that it was now so dead, and he grudged the glance which the beauty of +the new Art Academy extorted from him. It is in the French taste, and is +so far a monument to the continuance in one sort of that French +supremacy, of which in another sort another denkmal celebrates the +overthrow. Dusseldorf is not content with the denkmal of the Kaiser on +horseback, with the two Victories for grooms; there is a second, which +the Marches found when they strolled out again late in the afternoon. It +is in the lovely park which lies in the heart of the city, and they felt +in its presence the only emotion of sympathy which the many patriotic +monuments of Germany awakened in them. It had dignity and repose, which +these never had elsewhere; but it was perhaps not so much for the dying +warrior and the pitying lion of the sculpture that their hearts were +moved as for the gentle and mournful humanity of the inscription, which +dropped into equivalent English verse in March's note-book: + + Fame was enough for the Victors, and glory and verdurous laurel; + Tears by their mothers wept founded this image of stone. + +To this they could forgive the vaunting record, on the reverse, of the +German soldiers who died heroes in the war with France, the war with +Austria, and even the war with poor little Denmark! + +The morning had been bright and warm, and it was just that the afternoon +should be dim and cold, with a pale sun looking through a September mist, +which seemed to deepen the seclusion and silence of the forest reaches; +for the park was really a forest of the German sort, as parks are apt to +be in Germany. But it was beautiful, and they strayed through it, and +sometimes sat down on the benches in its damp shadows, and said how much +seemed to be done in Germany for the people's comfort and pleasure. In +what was their own explicitly, as well as what was tacitly theirs, they +were not so restricted as we were at home, and especially the children +seemed made fondly and lovingly free of all public things. The Marches +met troops of them in the forest, as they strolled slowly back by the +winding Dussel to the gardened avenue leading to the park, and they found +them everywhere gay and joyful. But their elders seemed subdued, and were +silent. The strangers heard no sound of laughter in the streets of +Dusseldorf, and they saw no smiling except on the part of a very old +couple, whose meeting they witnessed and who grinned and cackled at each +other like two children as they shook hands. Perhaps they were indeed +children of that sad second childhood which one would rather not blossom +back into. + +In America, life is yet a joke with us, even when it is grotesque and +shameful, as it so often is; for we think we can make it right when we +choose. But there is no joking in Germany, between the first and second +childhoods, unless behind closed doors. Even there, people do not joke +above their breath about kings and emperors. If they joke about them in +print, they take out their laugh in jail, for the press laws are severely +enforced, and the prisons are full of able editors, serious as well as +comic. Lese-majesty is a crime that searches sinners out in every walk of +life, and it is said that in family jars a husband sometimes has the last +word of his wife by accusing her of blaspheming the sovereign, and so +having her silenced for three months at least behind penitential bars. + +"Think," said March, "how simply I could adjust any differences of +opinion between us in Dusseldorf." + +"Don't!" his wife implored with a burst of feeling which surprised him. +"I want to go home!" + +They had been talking over their day, and planning their journey to +Holland for the morrow, when it came to this outburst from her in the +last half-hour before bed which they sat prolonging beside their stove. + +"What! And not go to Holland? What is to become of my after-cure?" + +"Oh, it's too late for that, now. We've used up the month running about, +and tiring ourselves to death. I should like to rest a week--to get into +my berth on the Norumbia and rest!" + +"I guess the September gales would have something to say about that." + +"I would risk the September gales." + + + + +LXXII. + +In the morning March came home from his bankers gay with the day's +provisional sunshine in his heart, and joyously expectant of his wife's +pleasure in the letters he was bringing. There was one from each of their +children, and there was one from Fulkerson, which March opened and read +on the street, so as to intercept any unpleasant news there might be in +them; there were two letters for Mrs. March which he knew without opening +were from Miss Triscoe and Mrs. Adding respectively; Mrs. Adding's, from +the postmarks, seemed to have been following them about for some time. + +"They're all right at home," he said. "Do see what those people have been +doing." + +"I believe," she said, taking a knife from the breakfast tray beside her +bed to cut the envelopes, "that you've really cared more about them all +along than I have." + +"No, I've only been anxious to be done with them." + +She got the letters open, and holding one of them up in each hand she +read them impartially and simultaneously; then she flung them both down, +and turned her face into her pillow with an impulse of her inalienable +girlishness. "Well, it is too silly." + +March felt authorized to take them up and read them consecutively; when +he had done, so he did not differ from his wife. In one case, Agatha had +written to her dear Mrs. March that she and Burnamy had just that evening +become engaged; Mrs. Adding, on her part owned a farther step, and +announced her marriage to Mr. Kenby. Following immemorial usage in such +matters Kenby had added a postscript affirming his happiness in unsparing +terms, and in Agatha's letter there was an avowal of like effect from +Burnamy. Agatha hinted her belief that her father would soon come to +regard Burnamy as she did; and Mrs. Adding professed a certain +humiliation in having realized that, after all her misgiving about him, +Rose seemed rather relieved than otherwise, as if he were glad to have +her off his hands. + +"Well," said March, "with these troublesome affairs settled, I don't see +what there is to keep us in Europe any longer, unless it's the consensus +of opinion in Tom, Bella, and Fulkerson, that we ought to stay the +winter." + +"Stay the winter!" Mrs. March rose from her pillow, and clutched the home +letters to her from the abeyance in which they had fallen on the coverlet +while she was dealing with the others. "What do you mean?" + +"It seems to have been prompted by a hint you let drop, which Tom has +passed to Bella and Fulkerson." + +"Oh, but that was before we left Carlsbad!" she protested, while she +devoured the letters with her eyes, and continued to denounce the +absurdity of the writers. Her son and daughter both urged that now their +father and mother were over there, they had better stay as long as they +enjoyed it, and that they certainly ought not to come home without going +to Italy, where they had first met, and revisiting the places which they +had seen together when they were young engaged people: without that their +silver wedding journey would not be complete. Her son said that +everything was going well with 'Every Other Week', and both himself and +Mr. Fulkerson thought his father ought to spend the winter in Italy, and +get a thorough rest. "Make a job of it, March," Fulkerson wrote, "and +have a Sabbatical year while you're at it. You may not get another." + +"Well, I can tell them," said Mrs. March indignantly, "we shall not do +anything of the kind." + +"Then you didn't mean it?" + +"Mean it!" She stopped herself with a look at her husband, and asked +gently, "Do you want to stay?" + +"Well, I don't know," he answered vaguely. The fact was, he was sick of +travel and of leisure; he was longing to be at home and at work again. +But if there was to be any self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, +at a bargain; which could be fairly divided between them, and leave him +the self and her the sacrifice, he was too experienced a husband not to +see the advantage of it, or to refuse the merit. "I thought you wished to +stay." + +"Yes," she sighed, "I did. It has been very, very pleasant, and, if +anything, I have over-enjoyed myself. We have gone romping through it +like two young people, haven't we?" + +"You have," he assented. "I have always felt the weight of my years in +getting the baggage registered; they have made the baggage weigh more +every time." + +"And I've forgotten mine. Yes, I have. But the years haven't forgotten +me, Basil, and now I remember them. I'm tired. It doesn't seem as if I +could ever get up. But I dare say it's only a mood; it may be only a +cold; and if you wish to stay, why--we will think it over." + +"No, we won't, my dear," he said, with a generous shame for his hypocrisy +if not with a pure generosity. "I've got all the good out of it that +there was in it, for me, and I shouldn't go home any better six months +hence than I should now. Italy will keep for another time, and so, for +the matter of that, will Holland." + +"No, no!" she interposed. "We won't give up Holland, whatever we do. I +couldn't go home feeling that I had kept you out of your after-cure; and +when we get there, no doubt the sea air will bring me up so that I shall +want to go to Italy, too, again. Though it seems so far off, now! But go +and see when the afternoon train for the Hague leaves, and I shall be +ready. My mind's quite made up on that point." + +"What a bundle of energy!" said her husband laughing down at her. + +He went and asked about the train to the Hague, but only to satisfy a +superficial conscience; for now he knew that they were both of one mind +about going home. He also looked up the trains for London, and found that +they could get there by way of Ostend in fourteen hours. Then he went +back to the banker's, and with the help of the Paris-New York Chronicle +which he found there, he got the sailings of the first steamers home. +After that he strolled about the streets for a last impression of +Dusseldorf, but it was rather blurred by the constantly recurring pull of +his thoughts toward America, and he ended by turning abruptly at a +certain corner, and going to his hotel. + +He found his wife dressed, but fallen again on her bed, beside which her +breakfast stood still untasted; her smile responded wanly to his +brightness. "I'm not well, my dear," she said. "I don't believe I could +get off to the Hague this afternoon." + +"Could you to Liverpool?" he returned. + +"To Liverpool?" she gasped. "What do you mean?" + +"Merely that the Cupania is sailing on the twentieth, and I've +telegraphed to know if we can get a room. I'm afraid it won't be a good +one, but she's the first boat out, and--" + +"No, indeed, we won't go to Liverpool, and we will never go home till +you've had your after-cure in Holland." She was very firm in this, but +she added, "We will stay another night, here, and go to the Hague +tomorrow. Sit down, and let us talk it over. Where were we?" + +She lay down on the sofa, and he put a shawl over her. "We were just +starting for Liverpool." + +"No, no we weren't! Don't say such things, dearest! I want you to help me +sum it all, up. You think it's been a success, don't you?" + +"As a cure?" + +"No, as a silver wedding journey?" + +"Perfectly howling." + +"I do think we've had a good time. I never expected to enjoy myself so +much again in the world. I didn't suppose I should ever take so much +interest in anything. It shows that when we choose to get out of our rut +we shall always find life as fresh and delightful as ever. There is +nothing to prevent our coming any year, now that Tom's shown himself so +capable, and having another silver wedding journey. I don't like to think +of it's being confined to Germany quite." + +"Oh, I don't know. We can always talk of it as our German-Silver Wedding +Journey." + +"That's true. But nobody would understand nowadays what you meant by +German-silver; it's perfectly gone out. How ugly it was! A sort of greasy +yellowish stuff, always getting worn through; I believe it was made worn +through. Aunt Mary had a castor of it, that I can remember when I was a +child; it went into the kitchen long before I grew up. Would a joke like +that console you for the loss of Italy?" + +"It would go far to do it. And as a German-Silver Wedding Journey, it's +certainly been very complete." + +"What do you mean?" + +"It's given us a representative variety of German cities. First we had +Hamburg, you know, a great modern commercial centre." + +"Yes! Go on!" + +"Then we had Leipsic, the academic." + +"Yes!" + +"Then Carlsbad, the supreme type of a German health resort; then +Nuremberg, the mediaeval; then Anspach, the extinct princely capital; +then Wurzburg, the ecclesiastical rococo; then Weimar, for the literature +of a great epoch; then imperial Berlin; then Frankfort, the memory of the +old free city; then Dusseldorf, the centre of the most poignant personal +interest in the world--I don't see how we could have done better, if we'd +planned it all, and not acted from successive impulses." + +"It's been grand; it's been perfect! As German-Silver Wedding Journey +it's perfect--it seems as if it had been ordered! But I will never let +you give up Holland! No, we will go this afternoon, and when I get to +Schevleningen, I'll go to bed, and stay there, till you've completed your +after-cure." + +"Do you think that will be wildly gay for the convalescent?" + +She suddenly began to cry. "Oh, dearest, what shall we do? I feel +perfectly broken down. I'm afraid I'm going to be sick--and away from +home! How could you ever let me overdo, so?" She put her handkerchief to +her eyes, and turned her face into the sofa pillow. + +This was rather hard upon him, whom her vivid energy and inextinguishable +interest had not permitted a moment's respite from pleasure since they +left Carlsbad. But he had been married, too long not to understand that +her blame of him was only a form of self-reproach for her own +self-forgetfulness. She had not remembered that she was no longer young +till she had come to what he saw was a nervous collapse. The fact had its +pathos and its poetry which no one could have felt more keenly than he. +If it also had its inconvenience and its danger he realized these too. + +"Isabel," he said, "we are going home." + +"Very well, then it will be your doing." + +"Quite. Do you think you could stand it as far as Cologne? We get the +sleeping-car there, and you can lie down the rest of the way to Ostend." + +"This afternoon? Why I'm perfectly strong; it's merely my nerves that are +gone." She sat up, and wiped her eyes. "But Basil! If you're doing this +for me--" + +"I'm doing it for myself," said March, as he went out of the room. + +She stood the journey perfectly well, and in the passage to Dover she +suffered so little from the rough weather that she was an example to many +robust matrons who filled the ladies' cabin with the noise of their +anguish during the night. She would have insisted upon taking the first +train up to London, if March had not represented that this would not +expedite the sailing of the Cupania, and that she might as well stay the +forenoon at the convenient railway hotel, and rest. It was not quite his +ideal of repose that the first people they saw in the coffee-room when +they went to breakfast should be Kenby and Rose Adding, who were having +their tea and toast and eggs together in the greatest apparent +good-fellowship. He saw his wife shrink back involuntarily from the +encounter, but this was only to gather force for it; and the next moment +she was upon them in all the joy of the surprise. Then March allowed +himself to be as glad as the others both seemed, and he shook hands with +Kenby while his wife kissed Rose; and they all talked at once. In the +confusion of tongues it was presently intelligible that Mrs. Kenby was +going to be down in a few minutes; and Kenby took March into his +confidence with a smile which was, almost a wink in explaining that he +knew how it was with the ladies. He said that Rose and he usually got +down to breakfast first, and when he had listened inattentively to Mrs. +March's apology for being on her way home, he told her that she was lucky +not to have gone to Schevleningen, where she and March would have frozen +to death. He said that they were going to spend September at a little +place on the English coast, near by, where he had been the day before +with Rose to look at lodgings, and where you could bathe all through the +month. He was not surprised that the Marches were going home, and said, +Well, that was their original plan, wasn't it? + +Mrs. Kenby, appearing upon this, pretended to know better, after the +outburst of joyful greeting with the Marches; and intelligently reminded +Kenby that he knew the Marches had intended to pass the winter in Paris. +She was looking extremely pretty, but she wished only to make them see +how well Rose was looking, and she put her arm round his shoulders as she +spoke, Schevleningen had done wonders for him, but it was fearfully cold +there, and now they were expecting everything from Westgate, where she +advised March to come, too, for his after-cure: she recollected in time +to say, She forgot they were on their way home. She added that she did +not know when she should return; she was merely a passenger, now; she +left everything to the men of the family. She had, in fact, the air of +having thrown off every responsibility, but in supremacy, not submission. +She was always ordering Kenby about; she sent him for her handkerchief, +and her rings which she had left either in the tray of her trunk, or on +the pin-cushion, or on the wash-stand or somewhere, and forbade him to +come back without them. He asked for her keys, and then with a joyful +scream she owned that she had left the door-key in the door and the whole +bunch of trunk-keys in her trunk; and Kenby treated it all as the +greatest joke; Rose, too, seemed to think that Kenby would make +everything come right, and he had lost that look of anxiety which he used +to have; at the most he showed a friendly sympathy for Kenby, for whose +sake he seemed mortified at her. He was unable to regard his mother as +the delightful joke which she appeared to Kenby, but that was merely +temperamental; and he was never distressed except when she behaved with +unreasonable caprice at Kenby's cost. + +As for Kenby himself he betrayed no dissatisfaction with his fate to +March. He perhaps no longer regarded his wife as that strong character +which he had sometimes wearied March by celebrating; but she was still +the most brilliant intelligence, and her charm seemed only to have grown +with his perception of its wilful limitations. He did not want to talk +about her so much; he wanted rather to talk about Rose, his health, his +education, his nature, and what was best to do for him. The two were on +terms of a confidence and affection which perpetually amused Mrs. Kenby, +but which left the sympathetic witness nothing to desire in their +relation. + +They all came to the train when the Marches started up to London, and +stood waving to them as they pulled out of the station. "Well, I can't +see but that's all right," he said as he sank back in his seat with a +sigh of relief. "I never supposed we should get out of their marriage +half so well, and I don't feel that you quite made the match either, my +dear." + +She was forced to agree with him that the Kenbys seemed happy together, +and that there was nothing to fear for Rose in their happiness. He would +be as tenderly cared for by Kenby as he could have been by his mother, +and far more judiciously. She owned that she had trembled for him till +she had seen them all together; and now she should never tremble again. + +"Well?" March prompted, at a certain inconclusiveness in her tone rather +than her words. + +"Well, you can see that it, isn't ideal." + +"Why isn't it ideal? I suppose you think that the marriage of Burnamy and +Agatha Triscoe will be ideal, with their ignorances and inexperiences and +illusions." + +"Yes! It's the illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them, and at +their age the Kenbys can't have them." + +"Kenby is a solid mass of illusion. And I believe that people can go and +get as many new illusions as they want, whenever they've lost their old +ones." + +"Yes, but the new illusions won't wear so well; and in marriage you want +illusions that will last. No; you needn't talk to me. It's all very well, +but it isn't ideal." + +March laughed. "Ideal! What is ideal?" + +"Going home!" she said with such passion that he had not the heart to +point out that they were merely returning to their old duties, cares and +pains, with the worn-out illusion that these would be altogether +different when they took them up again. + + + + +LXXIII. + +In fulfilment of another ideal Mrs. March took straightway to her berth +when she got on board the Cupania, and to her husband's admiration she +remained there till the day before they reached New York. Her theory was +that the complete rest would do more than anything else to calm her +shaken nerves; and she did not admit into her calculations the chances of +adverse weather which March would not suggest as probable in the last +week in September. The event justified her unconscious faith. The ship's +run was of unparalled swiftness, even for the Cupania, and of unparalled +smoothness. For days the sea was as sleek as oil; the racks were never on +the tables once; the voyage was of the sort which those who make it no +more believe in at the time than those whom they afterwards weary in +boasting of it. + +The ship was very full, but Mrs. March did not show the slightest +curiosity to know who her fellow-passengers were. She said that she +wished to be let perfectly alone, even by her own emotions, and for this +reason she forbade March to bring her a list of the passengers till after +they had left Queenstown lest it should be too exciting. He did not take +the trouble to look it up, therefore; and the first night out he saw no +one whom he knew at dinner; but the next morning at breakfast he found +himself to his great satisfaction at the same table with the Eltwins. +They were so much at ease with him that even Mrs. Eltwin took part in the +talk, and told him how they had spent the time of her husband's rigorous +after-cure in Switzerland, and now he was going home much better than +they had expected. She said they had rather thought of spending the +winter in Europe, but had given it up because they were both a little +homesick. March confessed that this was exactly the case with his wife +and himself; and he had to add that Mrs. March was not very well +otherwise, and he should be glad to be at home on her account. The +recurrence of the word home seemed to deepen Eltwin's habitual gloom, and +Mrs. Eltwin hastened to leave the subject of their return for inquiry +into Mrs. March's condition; her interest did not so far overcome her +shyness that she ventured to propose a visit to her; and March found that +the fact of the Eltwins' presence on board did not agitate his wife. It +seemed rather to comfort her, and she said she hoped he would see all he +could of the poor old things. She asked if he had met any one else he +knew, and he was able to tell her that there seemed to be a good many +swells on board, and this cheered her very much, though he did not know +them; she liked to be near the rose, though it was not a flower that she +really cared for. + +She did not ask who the swells were, and March took no trouble to find +out. He took no trouble to get a passenger-list, and he had the more +trouble when he tried at last; the lists seemed to have all vanished, as +they have a habit of doing, after the first day; the one that he made +interest for with the head steward was a second-hand copy, and had no one +he knew in it but the Eltwins. The social solitude, however, was rather +favorable to certain other impressions. There seemed even more elderly +people than there were on the Norumbia; the human atmosphere was gray and +sober; there was nothing of the gay expansion of the outward voyage; +there was little talking or laughing among those autumnal men who were +going seriously and anxiously home, with faces fiercely set for the +coming grapple; or necks meekly bowed for the yoke. They had eaten their +cake, and it had been good, but there remained a discomfort in the +digestion. They sat about in silence, and March fancied that the flown +summer was as dreamlike to each of them as it now was to him. He hated to +be of their dreary company, but spiritually he knew that he was of it; +and he vainly turned to cheer himself with the younger passengers. Some +matrons who went about clad in furs amused him, for they must have been +unpleasantly warm in their jackets and boas; nothing but the hope of +being able to tell the customs inspector with a good conscience that the +things had been worn, would have sustained one lady draped from head to +foot in Astrakhan. + +They were all getting themselves ready for the fray or the play of the +coming winter; but there seemed nothing joyous in the preparation. There +were many young girls, as there always are everywhere, but there were not +many young men, and such as there were kept to the smoking-room. There +was no sign of flirtation among them; he would have given much for a +moment of the pivotal girl, to see whether she could have brightened +those gloomy surfaces with her impartial lamp. March wished that he could +have brought some report from the outer world to cheer his wife, as he +descended to their state-room. They had taken what they could get at the +eleventh hour, and they had got no such ideal room as they had in the +Norumbia. It was, as Mrs. March graphically said, a basement room. It was +on the north side of the ship, which is a cold exposure, and if there had +been any sun it could not have got into their window, which was half the +time under water. The green waves, laced with foam, hissed as they ran +across the port; and the electric fan in the corridor moaned like the +wind in a gable. + +He felt a sinking of the heart as he pushed the state-room door open, and +looked at his wife lying with her face turned to the wall; and he was +going to withdraw, thinking her asleep, when she said quietly, "Are we +going down?" + +"Not that I know of," he answered with a gayety he did not feel. "But +I'll ask the head steward." + +She put out her hand behind her for him to take, and clutched his fingers +convulsively. "If I'm never any better, you will always remember this +happy, summer, won't you? Oh, it's been such a happy summer! It has been +one long joy, one continued triumph! But it was too late; we were too +old; and it's broken me." + +The time had been when he would have attempted comfort; when he would +have tried mocking; but that time was long past; he could only pray +inwardly for some sort of diversion, but what it was to be in their +barren circumstance he was obliged to leave altogether to Providence. He +ventured, pending an answer to his prayers upon the question, "Don't you +think I'd better see the doctor, and get you some sort of tonic?" + +She suddenly turned and faced him. "The doctor! Why, I'm not sick, Basil! +If you can see the purser and get our rooms changed, or do something to +stop those waves from slapping against that horrible blinking one-eyed +window, you can save my life; but no tonic is going to help me." + +She turned her face from him again, and buried it in the bedclothes, +while he looked desperately at the racing waves, and the port that seemed +to open and shut like a weary eye. + +"Oh, go away!" she implored. "I shall be better presently, but if you +stand there like that--Go and see if you can't get some other room, where +I needn't feel as if I were drowning, all the way over." + +He obeyed, so far as to go away at once, and having once started, he did +not stop short of the purser's office. He made an excuse of getting +greenbacks for some English bank-notes, and then he said casually that he +supposed there would be no chance of having his room on the lower deck +changed for something a little less intimate with the sea. The purser was +not there to take the humorous view, but he conceived that March wanted +something higher up, and he was able to offer him a room of those on the +promenade where he had seen swells going in and out, for six hundred +dollars. March did not blench, but said he would get his wife to look at +it with him, and then he went out somewhat dizzily to take counsel with +himself how he should put the matter to her. She would be sure to ask +what the price of the new room would be, and he debated whether to take +it and tell her some kindly lie about it, or trust to the bracing effect +of the sum named in helping restore the lost balance of her nerves. He +was not so rich that he could throw six hundred dollars away, but there +might be worse things; and he walked up and down thinking. All at once it +flashed upon him that he had better see the doctor, anyway, and find out +whether there were not some last hope in medicine before he took the +desperate step before him. He turned in half his course, and ran into a +lady who had just emerged from the door of the promenade laden with +wraps, and who dropped them all and clutched him to save herself from +falling. + +"Why, Mr. March!" she shrieked. + +"Miss Triscoe!" he returned, in the astonishment which he shared with her +to the extent of letting the shawls he had knocked from her hold lie +between them till she began to pick them up herself. Then he joined her +and in the relief of their common occupation they contrived to possess +each other of the reason of their presence on, the same boat. She had +sorrowed over Mrs. March's sad state, and he had grieved to hear that her +father was going home because he was not at all well, before they found +the general stretched out in his steamer-chair, and waiting with a grim +impatience for his daughter. + +"But how is it you're not in the passenger-list?" he inquired of them +both, and Miss Triscoe explained that they had taken their passage at the +last moment, too late, she supposed, to get into the list. They were in +London, and had run down to Liverpool on the chance of getting berths. +Beyond this she was not definite, and there was an absence of Burnamy not +only from her company but from her conversation which mystified March +through all his selfish preoccupations with his wife. She was a girl who +had her reserves, but for a girl who had so lately and rapturously +written them of her engagement, there was a silence concerning her +betrothed that had almost positive quality. With his longing to try Miss +Triscoe upon Mrs. March's malady as a remedial agent, he had now the +desire to try Mrs. March upon Miss Triscoe's mystery as a solvent. She +stood talking to him, and refusing to sit down and be wrapped up in the +chair next her father. She said that if he were going to ask Mrs. March +to let her come to her, it would not be worth while to sit down; and he +hurried below. + +"Did you get it?" asked his wife, without looking round, but not so +apathetically as before. + +"Oh, yes. That's all right. But now, Isabel, there's something I've got +to tell you. You'd find it out, and you'd better know it at once." + +She turned her face, and asked sternly, "What is it?" + +Then he said, with, an almost equal severity, "Miss Triscoe is on board. +Miss Triscoe-and-her-father. She wishes to come down and see you." + +Mrs. March sat up and began to twist her hair into shape. "And Burnamy?" + +"There is no Burnamy physically, or so far as I can make out, +spiritually. She didn't mention him, and I talked at least five minutes +with her." + +"Hand me my dressing-sack," said Mrs. March, "and poke those things on +the sofa under the berth. Shut up that wash-stand, and pull the curtain +across that hideous window. Stop! Throw those towels into your berth. Put +my shoes, and your slippers into the shoe-bag on the door. Slip the +brushes into that other bag. Beat the dent out of the sofa cushion that +your head has made. Now!" + +"Then--then you will see her?" + +"See her!" + +Her voice was so terrible that he fled before it, and he returned with +Miss Triscoe in a dreamlike simultaneity. He remembered, as he led the +way into his corridor, to apologize for bringing her down into a basement +room. + +"Oh, we're in the basement, too; it was all we could get," she said in +words that ended within the state-room he opened to her. Then he went +back and took her chair and wraps beside her father. + +He let the general himself lead the way up to his health, which he was +not slow in reaching, and was not quick in leaving. He reminded March of +the state he had seen him in at Wurzburg, and he said it had gone from +bad to worse with him. At Weimar he had taken to his bed and merely +escaped from it with his life. Then they had tried Schevleningen for a +week, where, he said in a tone of some injury, they had rather thought +they might find them, the Marches. The air had been poison to him, and +they had come over to England with some notion of Bournemouth; but the +doctor in London had thought not, and urged their going home. "All Europe +is damp, you know, and dark as a pocket in winter," he ended. + +There had been nothing about Burnamy, and March decided that he must wait +to see his wife if he wished to know anything, when the general, who had +been silent, twisted his head towards him, and said without regard to the +context, "It was complicated, at Weimar, by that young man in the most +devilish way. Did my daughter write to Mrs. March about--Well it came to +nothing, after all; and I don't understand how, to this day. I doubt if +they do. It was some sort of quarrel, I suppose. I wasn't consulted in +the matter either way. It appears that parents are not consulted in these +trifling affairs, nowadays." He had married his daughter's mother in open +defiance of her father; but in the glare of his daughter's wilfulness +this fact had whitened into pious obedience. "I dare say I shall be told, +by-and-by, and shall be expected to approve of the result." + +A fancy possessed March that by operation of temperamental laws General +Triscoe was no more satisfied with Burnamy's final rejection than with +his acceptance. If the engagement was ever to be renewed, it might be +another thing; but as it stood, March divined a certain favor for the +young man in the general's attitude. But the affair was altogether too +delicate for comment; the general's aristocratic frankness in dealing +with it might have gone farther if his knowledge had been greater; but in +any case March did not see how he could touch it. He could only say, He +had always liked Burnamy, himself. + +He had his good qualities, the general owned. He did not profess to +understand the young men of our time; but certainly the fellow had the +instincts of a gentleman. He had nothing to say against him, unless in +that business with that man--what was his name? + +"Stoller?" March prompted. "I don't excuse him in that, but I don't blame +him so much, either. If punishment means atonement, he had the +opportunity of making that right very suddenly, and if pardon means +expunction, then I don't see why that offence hasn't been pretty well +wiped out. + +"Those things are not so simple as they used to seem," said the general, +with a seriousness beyond his wont in things that did not immediately +concern his own comfort or advantage. + + + + +LXXVI. + +In the mean time Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe were discussing another +offence of Burnamy's. + +"It wasn't," said the girl, excitedly, after a plunge through all the +minor facts to the heart of the matter, "that he hadn't a perfect right +to do it, if he thought I didn't care for him. I had refused him at +Carlsbad, and I had forbidden him to speak to me about--on the subject. +But that was merely temporary, and he ought to have known it. He ought to +have known that I couldn't accept him, on the spur of the moment, that +way; and when he had come back, after going away in disgrace, before he +had done anything to justify himself. I couldn't have kept my +self-respect; and as it was I had the greatest difficulty; and he ought +to have seen it. Of course he said afterwards that he didn't see it. But +when--when I found out that SHE had been in Weimar, and all that time, +while I had been suffering in Carlsbad and Wurzburg, and longing to see +him--let him know how I was really feeling--he was flirting with +that--that girl, then I saw that he was a false nature, and I determined +to put an end to everything. And that is what I did; and I shall always +think I--did right--and--" + +The rest was lost in Agatha's handkerchief, which she put up to her eyes. +Mrs. March watched her from her pillow keeping the girl's unoccupied hand +in her own, and softly pressing it till the storm was past sufficiently +to allow her to be heard. + +Then she said, "Men are very strange--the best of them. And from the very +fact that he was disappointed, he would be all the more apt to rush into +a flirtation with somebody else." + +Miss Triscoe took down her handkerchief from a face that had certainly +not been beautified by grief. "I didn't blame him for the flirting; or +not so much. It was his keeping it from me afterwards. He ought to have +told me the very first instant we were engaged. But he didn't. He let it +go on, and if I hadn't happened on that bouquet I might never have known +anything about it. That is what I mean by--a false nature. I wouldn't +have minded his deceiving me; but to let me deceive myself--Oh, it was +too much!" + +Agatha hid her face in her handkerchief again. She was perching on the +edge of the berth, and Mrs. March said, with a glance, which she did not +see, toward the sofa, "I'm afraid that's rather a hard seat for you. + +"Oh, no, thank you! I'm perfectly comfortable--I like it--if you don't +mind?" + +Mrs. March pressed her hand for answer, and after another little delay, +sighed and said, "They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are +more temporizing." + +"How do you mean?" Agatha unmasked again. + +"They can bear to keep things better than we can, and they trust to time +to bring them right, or to come right of themselves." + +"I don't think Mr. March would trust things to come right of themselves!" +said Agatha in indignant accusal of Mrs. March's sincerity. + +"Ah, that's just what he would do, my dear, and has done, all along; and +I don't believe we could have lived through without it: we should have +quarrelled ourselves into the grave!" + +"Mrs. March!" + +"Yes, indeed. I don't mean that he would ever deceive me. But he would +let things go on, and hope that somehow they would come right without any +fuss." + +"Do you mean that he would let anybody deceive themselves?" + +"I'm afraid he would--if he thought it would come right. It used to be a +terrible trial to me; and it is yet, at times when I don't remember that +he means nothing but good and kindness by it. Only the other day in +Ansbach--how long ago it seems!--he let a poor old woman give him her +son's address in Jersey City, and allowed her to believe he would look +him up when we got back and tell him we had seen her. I don't believe, +unless I keep right round after him, as we say in New England, that he'll +ever go near the man." + +Agatha looked daunted, but she said, "That is a very different thing." + +"It isn't a different kind of thing. And it shows what men are,--the +sweetest and best of them, that is. They are terribly apt to +be--easy-going." + +"Then you think I was all wrong?" the girl asked in a tremor. + +"No, indeed! You were right, because you really expected perfection of +him. You expected the ideal. And that's what makes all the trouble, in +married life: we expect too much of each other--we each expect more of +the other than we are willing to give or can give. If I had to begin over +again, I should not expect anything at all, and then I should be sure of +being radiantly happy. But all this talking and all this writing about +love seems to turn our brains; we know that men are not perfect, even at +our craziest, because women are not, but we expect perfection of them; +and they seem to expect it of us, poor things! If we could keep on after +we are in love just as we were before we were in love, and take nice +things as favors and surprises, as we did in the beginning! But we get +more and more greedy and exacting--" + +"Do you think I was too exacting in wanting him to tell me everything +after we were engaged?" + +"No, I don't say that. But suppose he had put it off till you were +married?" Agatha blushed a little, but not painfully, "Would it have been +so bad? Then you might have thought that his flirting up to the last +moment in his desperation was a very good joke. You would have understood +better just how it was, and it might even have made you fonder of him. +You might have seen that he had flirted with some one else because he was +so heart-broken about you." + +"Then you believe that if I could have waited till--till--but when I had +found out, don't you see I couldn't wait? It would have been all very +well if I hadn't known it till then. But as I did know it. Don't you +see?" + +"Yes, that certainly complicated it," Mrs. March admitted. "But I don't +think, if he'd been a false nature, he'd have owned up as he did. You +see, he didn't try to deny it; and that's a great point gained." + +"Yes, that is true," said Agatha, with conviction. "I saw that +afterwards. But you don't think, Mrs. March, that I was unjust or--or +hasty?" + +"No, indeed! You couldn't have done differently under the circumstances. +You may be sure he felt that--he is so unselfish and generous--" Agatha +began to weep into her handkerchief again; Mrs. March caressed her hand. +"And it will certainly come right if you feel as you do." + +"No," the girl protested. "He can never forgive me; it's all over, +everything is over. It would make very little difference to me, what +happened now--if the steamer broke her shaft, or anything. But if I can +only believe I wasn't unjust--" + +Mrs. March assured her once more that she had behaved with absolute +impartiality; and she proved to her by a process of reasoning quite +irrefragable that it was only a question of time, with which place had +nothing to do, when she and Burnamy should come together again, and all +should be made right between them. The fact that she did not know where +he was, any more than Mrs. March herself, had nothing to do with the +result; that was a mere detail, which would settle itself. She clinched +her argument by confessing that her own engagement had been broken off, +and that it had simply renewed itself. All you had to do was to keep +willing it, and waiting. There was something very mysterious in it. + +"And how long was it till--" Agatha faltered. + +"Well, in our ease it was two years." + +"Oh!" said the girl, but Mrs. March hastened to reassure her. + +"But our case was very peculiar. I could see afterwards that it needn't +have been two months, if I had been willing to acknowledge at once that I +was in the wrong. I waited till we met." + +"If I felt that I was in the wrong, I should write," said Agatha. "I +shouldn't care what he thought of my doing it." + +"Yes, the great thing is to make sure that you were wrong." + +They remained talking so long, that March and the general had exhausted +all the topics of common interest, and had even gone through those they +did not care for. At last the general said, "I'm afraid my daughter will +tire Mrs. March." + +"Oh, I don't think she'll tire my wife. But do you want her?" + +"Well, when you're going down." + +"I think I'll take a turn about the deck, and start my circulation," said +March, and he did so before he went below. + +He found his wife up and dressed, and waiting provisionally on the sofa. +"I thought I might as well go to lunch," she said, and then she told him +about Agatha and Burnamy, and the means she had employed to comfort and +encourage the girl. "And now, dearest, I want you to find out where +Burnamy is, and give him a hint. You will, won't you! If you could have +seen how unhappy she was!" + +"I don't think I should have cared, and I'm certainly not going to +meddle. I think Burnamy has got no more than he deserved, and that he's +well rid of her. I can't imagine a broken engagement that would more +completely meet my approval. As the case stands, they have my blessing." + +"Don't say that, dearest! You know you don't mean it." + +"I do; and I advise you to keep your hands off. You've done all and more +than you ought to propitiate Miss Triscoe. You've offered yourself up, +and you've offered me up--" + +"No, no, Basil! I merely used you as an illustration of what men +were--the best of them." + +"And I can't observe," he continued, "that any one else has been +considered in the matter. Is Miss Triscoe the sole sufferer by Burnamy's +flirtation? What is the matter with a little compassion for the pivotal +girl?" + +"Now, you know you're not serious," said his wife; and though he would +not admit this, he could not be seriously sorry for the new interest +which she took in the affair. There was no longer any question of +changing their state-room. Under the tonic influence of the excitement +she did not go back to her berth after lunch, and she was up later after +dinner than he could have advised. She was absorbed in Agatha, but in her +liberation from her hypochondria, she began also to make a comparative +study of the American swells, in the light of her late experience with +the German highhotes. It is true that none of the swells gave her the +opportunity of examining them at close range, as the highhotes had done. +They kept to their state-rooms mostly, where, after he thought she could +bear it, March told her how near he had come to making her their equal by +an outlay of six hundred dollars. She now shuddered at the thought; but +she contended that in their magnificent exclusiveness they could give +points to European princes; and that this showed again how when Americans +did try to do a thing, they beat the world. Agatha Triscoe knew who they +were, but she did not know them; they belonged to another kind of set; +she spoke of them as "rich people," and she seemed content to keep away +from them with Mrs. March and with the shy, silent old wife of Major +Eltwin, to whom March sometimes found her talking. + +He never found her father talking with Major Eltwin. General Triscoe had +his own friends in the smoking-room, where he held forth in a certain +corner on the chances of the approaching election in New York, and mocked +their incredulity when he prophesied the success of Tammany and the +return of the King. March himself much preferred Major Eltwin to the +general and his friends; he lived back in the talk of the Ohioan into his +own younger years in Indiana, and he was amused and touched to find how +much the mid-Western life seemed still the same as he had known. The +conditions had changed, but not so much as they had changed in the East +and the farther West. The picture that the major drew of them in his own +region was alluring; it made March homesick; though he knew that he +should never go back to his native section. There was the comfort of kind +in the major; and he had a vein of philosophy, spare but sweet, which +March liked; he liked also the meekness which had come through sorrow +upon a spirit which had once been proud. + +They had both the elderly man's habit of early rising, and they usually +found themselves together waiting impatiently for the cup of coffee, +ingenuously bad, which they served on the Cupania not earlier than half +past six, in strict observance of a rule of the line discouraging to +people of their habits. March admired the vileness of the decoction, +which he said could not be got anywhere out of the British Empire, and he +asked Eltwin the first morning if he had noticed how instantly on the +Channel boat they had dropped to it and to the sour, heavy, sodden +British bread, from the spirited and airy Continental tradition of coffee +and rolls. + +The major confessed that he was no great hand to notice such things, and +he said he supposed that if the line had never lost a passenger, and got +you to New York in six days it had a right to feed you as it pleased; he +surmised that if they could get their airing outside before they took +their coffee, it would give the coffee a chance to taste better; and this +was what they afterwards did. They met, well buttoned and well mined up, +on the promenade when it was yet so early that they were not at once sure +of each other in the twilight, and watched the morning planets pale east +and west before the sun rose. Sometimes there were no paling planets and +no rising sun, and a black sea, ridged with white, tossed under a low +dark sky with dim rifts. + +One morning, they saw the sun rise with a serenity and majesty which it +rarely has outside of the theatre. The dawn began over that sea which was +like the rumpled canvas imitations of the sea on the stage, under long +mauve clouds bathed in solemn light. Above these, in the pale tender sky, +two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted across them like a +thin dusky veil. To the right a bank of dun cloud began to burn crimson, +and to burn brighter till it was like a low hill-side full of gorgeous +rugosities fleeced with a dense dwarfish growth of autumnal shrubs. The +whole eastern heaven softened and flushed through diaphanous mists; the +west remained a livid mystery. The eastern masses and flakes of cloud +began to kindle keenly; but the stars shone clearly, and then one star, +till the tawny pink hid it. All the zenith reddened, but still the sun +did not show except in the color of the brilliant clouds. At last the +lurid horizon began to burn like a flame-shot smoke, and a fiercely +bright disc edge pierced its level, and swiftly defined itself as the +sun's orb. + +Many thoughts went through March's mind; some of them were sad, but in +some there was a touch of hopefulness. It might have been that beauty +which consoled him for his years; somehow he felt himself, if no longer +young, a part of the young immortal frame of things. His state was +indefinable, but he longed to hint at it to his companion. + +"Yes," said Eltwin, with a long deep sigh. "I feel as if I could walk out +through that brightness and find her. I reckon that such hopes wouldn't +be allowed to lie to us; that so many ages of men couldn't have fooled +themselves so. I'm glad I've seen this." He was silent and they both +remained watching the rising sun till they could not bear its splendor. +"Now," said the major, "it must be time for that mud, as you call it." +Over their coffee and crackers at the end of the table which they had to +themselves, he resumed. "I was thinking all the time--we seem to think +half a dozen things at once, and this was one of them--about a piece of +business I've got to settle when I reach home; and perhaps you can advise +me about it; you're an editor. I've got a newspaper on my hands; I reckon +it would be a pretty good thing, if it had a chance; but I don't know +what to do with it: I got it in trade with a fellow who has to go West +for his lungs, but he's staying till I get back. What's become of that +young chap--what's his name?--that went out with us?" + +"Burnamy?" prompted March, rather breathlessly. + +"Yes. Couldn't he take hold of it? I rather liked him. He's smart, isn't +he?" + +"Very," said March. "But I don't know where he is. I don't know that he +would go into the country--. But he might, if--" + +They entered provisionally into the case, and for argument's sake +supposed that Burnamy would take hold of the major's paper if he could be +got at. It really looked to March like a good chance for him, on Eltwin's +showing; but he was not confident of Burnamy's turning up very soon, and +he gave the major a pretty clear notion why, by entering into the young +fellow's history for the last three months. + +"Isn't it the very irony of fate?" he said to his wife when he found her +in their room with a cup of the same mud he had been drinking, and +reported the facts to her. + +"Irony?" she said, with all the excitement he could have imagined or +desired. "Nothing of the kind. It's a leading, if ever there was one. It +will be the easiest thing in the world to find Burnamy. And out there she +can sit on her steps!" + +He slowly groped his way to her meaning, through the hypothesis of +Burnamy's reconciliation and marriage with Agatha Triscoe, and their +settlement in Major Eltwin's town under social conditions that implied a +habit of spending the summer evenings on their front porch. While he was +doing this she showered him with questions and conjectures and +requisitions in which nothing but the impossibility of going ashore saved +him from the instant devotion of all his energies to a world-wide, +inquiry into Burnamy's whereabouts. + +The next morning he was up before Major Eltwin got out, and found the +second-cabin passengers free of the first-cabin promenade at an hour when +their superiors were not using it. As he watched these inferiors, +decent-looking, well-clad men and women, enjoying their privilege with a +furtive air, and with stolen glances at him, he asked himself in what +sort he was their superior, till the inquiry grew painful. Then he rose +from his chair, and made his way to the place where the material barrier +between them was lifted, and interested himself in a few of them who +seemed too proud to avail themselves of his society on the terms made. A +figure seized his attention with a sudden fascination of conjecture and +rejection: the figure of a tall young man who came out on the promenade +and without looking round, walked swiftly away to the bow of the ship, +and stood there, looking down at the water in an attitude which was +bewilderingly familiar. His movement, his posture, his dress, even, was +that of Burnamy, and March, after a first flush of pleasure, felt a +sickening repulsion in the notion of his presence. It would have been +such a cheap performance on the part of life, which has all sorts of +chances at command, and need not descend to the poor tricks of +second-rate fiction; and he accused Burnamy of a complicity in the bad +taste of the affair, though he realized, when he reflected, that if it +were really Burnamy he must have sailed in as much unconsciousness of the +Triscoes as he himself had done. He had probably got out of money and had +hurried home while he had still enough to pay the second-cabin fare on +the first boat back. Clearly he was not to blame, but life was to blame +for such a shabby device; and March felt this so keenly that he wished to +turn from the situation, and have nothing to do with it. He kept moving +toward him, drawn by the fatal attraction, and at a few paces' distance +the young man whirled about and showed him the face of a stranger. + +March made some witless remark on the rapid course of the ship as it cut +its way through the water of the bow; the stranger answered with a strong +Lancashire accent; and in the talk which followed, he said he was going +out to see the cotton-mills at Fall River and New Bedford, and he seemed +hopeful of some advice or information from March; then he said he must go +and try to get his Missus out; March understood him to mean his wife, and +he hurried down to his own, to whom he related his hair-breadth escape +from Burnamy. + +"I don't call it an escape at all!" she declared. "I call it the greatest +possible misfortune. If it had been Burnamy we could have brought them +together at once, just when she has seen so clearly that she was in the +wrong, and is feeling all broken up. There wouldn't have been any +difficulty about his being in the second-cabin. We could have contrived +to have them meet somehow. If the worst came to the worst you could have +lent him money to pay the difference, and got him into the first-cabin." + +"I could have taken that six-hundred-dollar room for him," said March, +"and then he could have eaten with the swells." + +She answered that now he was teasing; that he was fundamentally incapable +of taking anything seriously; and in the end he retired before the +stewardess bringing her first coffee, with a well-merited feeling that if +it had not been for his triviality the young Lancashireman would really +have been Burnamy. + + + + +LXXV. + +Except for the first day and night out from Queenstown, when the ship +rolled and pitched with straining and squeaking noises, and a thumping of +the lifted screws, there was no rough weather, and at last the ocean was +livid and oily, with a long swell, on which she swayed with no +perceptible motion save from her machinery. + +Most of the seamanship seemed to be done after dark, or in those early +hours when March found the stewards cleaning the stairs, and the sailors +scouring the promenades. He made little acquaintance with his +fellow-passengers. One morning he almost spoke with an old Quaker lady +whom he joined in looking at the Niagara flood which poured from the +churning screws; but he did not quite get the words out. On the contrary +he talked freely with an American who, bred horses on a farm near +Boulogne, and was going home to the Horse Show; he had been thirty-five +years out of the country, but he had preserved his Yankee accent in all +its purity, and was the most typical-looking American on board. Now and +then March walked up and down with a blond Mexican whom he found of the +usual well-ordered Latin intelligence, but rather flavorless; at times he +sat beside a nice Jew, who talked agreeably, but only about business; and +he philosophized the race as so tiresome often because it seemed so often +without philosophy. He made desperate attempts at times to interest +himself in the pool-selling in the smoking-room where the betting on the +ship's wonderful run was continual. + +He thought that people talked less and less as they drew nearer home; but +on the last day out there was a sudden expansion, and some whom he had +not spoken with voluntarily addressed him. The sweet, soft air was like +midsummer the water rippled gently, without a swell, blue under the clear +sky, and the ship left a wide track that was silver in the sun. There +were more sail; the first and second class baggage was got up and piled +along the steerage deck. + +Some people dressed a little more than usual for the last dinner which +was earlier than usual, so as to be out of the way against the arrival +which had been variously predicted at from five to seven-thirty. An +indescribable nervousness culminated with the appearance of the customs +officers on board, who spread their papers on cleared spaces of the +dining-tables, and summoned the passengers to declare that they had +nothing to declare, as a preliminary to being searched like thieves at +the dock. + +This ceremony proceeded while the Cupania made her way up the Narrows, +and into the North River, where the flare of lights from the crazy steeps +and cliffs of architecture on the New York shore seemed a persistence of +the last Fourth of July pyrotechnics. March blushed for the grotesque +splendor of the spectacle, and was confounded to find some Englishmen +admiring it, till he remembered that aesthetics were not the strong point +of our race. His wife sat hand in hand with Miss Triscoe, and from time +to time made him count the pieces of small baggage in the keeping of +their steward; while General Triscoe held aloof in a sarcastic calm. + +The steamer groped into her dock; the gangways were lifted to her side; +the passengers fumbled and stumbled down their incline, and at the bottom +the Marches found themselves respectively in the arms of their son and +daughter. They all began talking at once, and ignoring and trying to +remember the Triscoes to whom the young Marches were presented. Bella did +her best to be polite to Agatha, and Tom offered to get an inspector for +the general at the same time as for his father. Then March, remorsefully +remembered the Eltwins, and looked about for them, so that his son might +get them an inspector too. He found the major already in the hands of an +inspector, who was passing all his pieces after carelessly looking into +one: the official who received the declarations on board had noted a +Grand Army button like his own in the major's lapel, and had marked his +fellow-veteran's paper with the mystic sign which procures for the bearer +the honor of being promptly treated as a smuggler, while the less favored +have to wait longer for this indignity at the hands of their government. +When March's own inspector came he was as civil and lenient as our +hateful law allows; when he had finished March tried to put a bank-note +in his hand, and was brought to a just shame by his refusal of it. The +bed-room steward keeping guard over the baggage helped put-it together +after the search, and protested that March had feed him so handsomely +that he would stay there with it as long as they wished. This partly +restored March's self-respect, and he could share in General Triscoe's +indignation with the Treasury ruling which obliged him to pay duty on his +own purchases in excess of the hundred-dollar limit, though his daughter +had brought nothing, and they jointly came far within the limit for two. + +He found that the Triscoes were going to a quiet old hotel on the way to +Stuyvesant Square, quite in his own neighborhood, and he quickly arranged +for all the ladies and the general to drive together while he was to +follow with his son on foot and by car. They got away from the scene of +the customs' havoc while the steamer shed, with its vast darkness dimly +lit by its many lamps, still showed like a battle-field where the +inspectors groped among the scattered baggage like details from the +victorious army searching for the wounded. His son clapped him on the +shoulder when he suggested this notion, and said he was the same old +father; and they got home as gayly together as the dispiriting influences +of the New York ugliness would permit. It was still in those good and +decent times, now so remote, when the city got something for the money +paid out to keep its streets clean, and those they passed through were +not foul but merely mean. + +The ignoble effect culminated when they came into Broadway, and found its +sidewalks, at an hour when those of any European metropolis would have +been brilliant with life, as unpeopled as those of a minor country town, +while long processions of cable-cars carted heaps of men and women up and +down the thoroughfare amidst the deformities of the architecture. + +The next morning the March family breakfasted late after an evening +prolonged beyond midnight in spite of half-hourly agreements that now +they must really all go to bed. The children had both to recognize again +and again how well their parents were looking; Tom had to tell his father +about the condition of 'Every Other Week'; Bella had to explain to her +mother how sorry her husband was that he could not come on to meet them +with her, but was coming a week later to take her home, and then she +would know the reason why they could not all, go back to Chicago with +him: it was just the place for her father to live, for everybody to live. +At breakfast she renewed the reasoning with which she had maintained her +position the night before; the travellers entered into a full expression +of their joy at being home again; March asked what had become of that +stray parrot which they had left in the tree-top the morning they +started; and Mrs. March declared that this was the last Silver Wedding +Journey she ever wished to take, and tried to convince them all that she +had been on the verge of nervous collapse when she reached the ship. They +sat at table till she discovered that it was very nearly eleven o'clock, +and said it was disgraceful. + +Before they rose, there was a ring at the door, and a card was brought in +to Tom. He glanced at it, and said to his father, "Oh, yes! This man has +been haunting the office for the last three days. He's got to leave +to-day, and as it seemed to be rather a case of life and death with him, +I said he'd probably find you here this morning. But if you don't want to +see him, I can put him off till afternoon, I suppose." + +He tossed the card to his father, who looked at it quietly, and then gave +it to his wife. "Perhaps I'd as well see him?" + +"See him!" she returned in accents in which all the intensity of her soul +was centred. By an effort of self-control which no words can convey a +just sense of she remained with her children, while her husband with a +laugh more teasing than can be imagined went into the drawing-room to +meet Burnamy. + +The poor fellow was in an effect of belated summer as to clothes, and he +looked not merely haggard but shabby. He made an effort for dignity as +well as gayety, however, in stating himself to March, with many apologies +for his persistency. But, he said, he was on his way West, and he was +anxious to know whether there was any chance of his 'Kasper Hauler' paper +being taken if he finished it up. March would have been a far +harder-hearted editor than he was, if he could have discouraged the +suppliant before him. He said he would take the Kasper Hauler paper and +add a band of music to the usual rate of ten dollars a thousand words. +Then Burnamy's dignity gave way, if not his gayety; he began to laugh, +and suddenly he broke down and confessed that he had come home in the +steerage; and was at his last cent, beyond his fare to Chicago. His straw +hat looked like a withered leaf in the light of his sad facts; his thin +overcoat affected March's imagination as something like the diaphanous +cast shell of a locust, hopelessly resumed for comfort at the approach of +autumn. He made Burnamy sit down, after he had once risen, and he told +him of Major Eltwin's wish to see him; and he promised to go round with +him to the major's hotel before the Eltwins left town that afternoon. + +While he prolonged the interview in this way, Mrs. March was kept from +breaking in upon them only by the psychical experiment which she was +making with the help and sympathy of her daughter at the window of the +dining-room which looked up Sixteenth Street. At the first hint she gave +of the emotional situation which Burnamy was a main part of, her son; +with the brutal contempt of young men for other young men's love affairs, +said he must go to the office; he bade his mother tell his father there +was no need of his coming down that day, and he left the two women +together. This gave the mother a chance to develop the whole fact to the +daughter with telegrammic rapidity and brevity, and then to enrich the +first-outline with innumerable details, while they both remained at the +window, and Mrs. March said at two-minutely intervals, with no sense of +iteration for either of them, "I told her to come in the morning, if she +felt like it, and I know she will. But if she doesn't, I shall say there +is nothing in fate, or Providence either. At any rate I'm going to stay +here and keep longing for her, and we'll see whether there's anything in +that silly theory of your father's. I don't believe there is," she said, +to be on the safe side. + +Even when she saw Agatha Triscoe enter the park gate on Rutherford Place, +she saved herself from disappointment by declaring that she was not +coming across to their house. As the girl persisted in coming and coming, +and at last came so near that she caught sight of Mrs. March at the +window and nodded, the mother turned ungratefully upon her daughter, and +drove her away to her own room, so that no society detail should hinder +the divine chance. She went to the door herself when Agatha rang, and +then she was going to open the way into the parlor where March was still +closeted with Burnamy, and pretend that she had not known they were +there. But a soberer second thought than this prevailed, and she told the +girl who it was that was within and explained the accident of his +presence. "I think," she said nobly, "that you ought to have the chance +of going away if you don't wish to meet him." + +The girl, with that heroic precipitation which Mrs. March had noted in +her from the first with regard to what she wanted to do, when Burnamy was +in question, answered, "But I do wish to meet him, Mrs. March." + +While they stood looking at each other, March came out to ask his wife if +she would see Burnamy, and she permitted herself so much stratagem as to +substitute Agatha, after catching her husband aside and subduing his +proposed greeting of the girl to a hasty handshake. + +Half an hour later she thought it time to join the young people, urged +largely by the frantic interest of her daughter. But she returned from +the half-open door without entering. "I couldn't bring myself to break in +on the poor things. They are standing at the window together looking over +at St. George's." + +Bella silently clasped her hands. March gave cynical laugh, and said, +"Well we are in for it, my dear." Then he added, "I hope they'll take us +with them on their Silver Wedding Journey." + + + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Declare that they had nothing to declare + Despair which any perfection inspires + Disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love + Fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously + Held aloof in a sarcastic calm + Illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them + Married life: we expect too much of each other + Not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country + Offence which any difference of taste was apt to give him + Passionate desire for excess in a bad thing + Puddles of the paths were drying up with the haste + Race seemed so often without philosophy + Self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, at a bargain + She always came to his defence when he accused himself + + + + +PG EDITORS BOOKMARKS FOR THE COMPLETE TRILOGY: + + Affected absence of mind + Affectional habit + All the loveliness that exists outside of you, dearest is little + All luckiest or the unluckiest, the healthiest or the sickest + Americans are hungrier for royalty than anybody else + Amusing world, if you do not refuse to be amused + Anticipative homesickness + Anticipative reprisal + Any sort of stuff was good enough to make a preacher out of + Appearance made him doubt their ability to pay so much + Artists never do anything like other people + As much of his story as he meant to tell without prompting + At heart every man is a smuggler + Bad wars, or what are comically called good wars + Ballast of her instinctive despondency + Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever + Beautiful with the radiance of loving and being loved + Bewildering labyrinth of error + Biggest place is always the kindest as well as the cruelest + Brag of his wife, as a good husband always does + Brown-stone fronts + But when we make that money here, no one loses it + Buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience + Calm of those who have logic on their side + Civilly protested and consented + Clinging persistence of such natures + Coldly and inaccessibly vigilant + Collective silence which passes for sociality + Comfort of the critical attitude + Conscience weakens to the need that isn't + Considerable comfort in holding him accountable + Courage hadn't been put to the test + Courtship + Deadly summer day + Death is peace and pardon + Death is an exile that no remorse and no love can reach + Decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance + Declare that they had nothing to declare + Despair which any perfection inspires + Did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she realized him + Dinner unites the idea of pleasure and duty + Disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love + Dividend: It's a chicken before it's hatched + Does any one deserve happiness + Does anything from without change us? + Dog that had plainly made up his mind to go mad + Effort to get on common ground with an inferior + Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a translation + Evil which will not let a man forgive his victim + Explained perhaps too fully + Extract what consolation lurks in the irreparable + Family buryin' grounds + Favorite stock of his go up and go down under the betting + Feeblest-minded are sure to lead the talk + Feeling rather ashamed,--for he had laughed too + Feeling of contempt for his unambitious destination + Flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another + Fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously + Futility of travel + Gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it + Glad; which considering, they ceased to be + Got their laugh out of too many things in life + Guilty rapture of a deliberate dereliction + Had learned not to censure the irretrievable + Had no opinions that he was not ready to hold in abeyance + Handsome pittance + Happiness is so unreasonable + Happiness built upon and hedged about with misery + He expected to do the wrong thing when left to his own devices + He buys my poverty and not my will + Headache darkens the universe while it lasts + Heart that forgives but does not forget + Held aloof in a sarcastic calm + Helplessness begets a sense of irresponsibility + Helplessness accounts for many heroic facts in the world + Hemmed round with this eternal darkness of death + Homage which those who have not pay to those who have + Honest selfishness + Hopeful recklessness + How much can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing + Humanity may at last prevail over nationality + Hurry up and git well--or something + Hypothetical difficulty + I cannot endure this--this hopefulness of yours + I want to be sorry upon the easiest possible terms + I supposed I had the pleasure of my wife's acquaintance + I'm not afraid--I'm awfully demoralized + If you dread harm enough it is less likely to happen + Ignorant of her ignorance + Illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them + Impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much + Indispensable + Indulge safely in the pleasures of autobiography + Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate + It had come as all such calamities come, from nothing + It must be your despair that helps you to bear up + It don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time + It 's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't + Jesting mood in the face of all embarrassments + Justice must be paid for at every step in fees and costs + Less intrusive than if he had not been there + Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of + Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous + Life of the ship, like the life of the sea: a sodden monotony + Life has taught him to truckle and trick + Long life of holidays which is happy marriage + Love of justice hurry them into sympathy with violence + Made money and do not yet know that money has made them + Madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel + Man's willingness to abide in the present + Married life: we expect too much of each other + Married the whole mystifying world of womankind + Married for no other purpose than to avoid being an old maid + Marry for love two or three times + Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign + Muddy draught which impudently affected to be coffee + Nervous woes of comfortable people + Never-blooming shrub + Never could have an emotion without desiring to analyze it + Night so bad that it was worse than no night at all + No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another + No longer the gross appetite for novelty + No right to burden our friends with our decisions + Not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country + Nothing so apt to end in mutual dislike,--except gratitude + Nothing so sad to her as a bride, unless it's a young mother + Novelists, who really have the charge of people's thinking + Oblivion of sleep + Offence which any difference of taste was apt to give him + Only so much clothing as the law compelled + Only one of them was to be desperate at a time + Our age caricatures our youth + Parkman + Passionate desire for excess in a bad thing + Patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius + Patronizing spirit of travellers in a foreign country + People that have convictions are difficult + Person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it + Poverty as hopeless as any in the world + Prices fixed by his remorse + Puddles of the paths were drying up with the haste + Race seemed so often without philosophy + Recipes for dishes and diseases + Reckless and culpable optimism + Reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last + Rejoice in everything that I haven't done + Rejoice as much at a non-marriage as a marriage + Repeated the nothings they had said already + Respect for your mind, but she don't think you've got any sense + Say when he is gone that the woman gets along better without him + Seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed + Seeming interested in points necessarily indifferent to him + Self-sufficiency, without its vulgarity + Self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, at a bargain + Servant of those he loved + She always came to his defence when he accused himself + She cares for him: that she was so cold shows that + She could bear his sympathy, but not its expression + Shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo'--its inconvenience + Sigh with which ladies recognize one another's martyrdom + So hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do + So old a world and groping still + Society: All its favors are really bargains + Sorry he hadn't asked more; that's human nature + Suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism + Superstition that having and shining is the chief good + Superstition of the romances that love is once for all + That isn't very old--or not so old as it used to be + The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances + There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure + They were so near in age, though they were ten years apart + They can only do harm by an expression of sympathy + Timidity of the elder in the presence of the younger man + To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing that one likes + Took the world as she found it, and made the best of it + Tragical character of heat + Travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues + Tried to be homesick for them, but failed + Turn to their children's opinion with deference + Typical anything else, is pretty difficult to find + Unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine + Used to having his decisions reached without his knowledge + Vexed by a sense of his own pitifulness + Voice of the common imbecility and incoherence + Voting-cattle whom they bought and sold + Wages are the measure of necessity and not of merit + We get too much into the hands of other people + We don't seem so much our own property + Weariness of buying + What we can be if we must + When you look it--live it + Wilful sufferers + Willingness to find poetry in things around them + Wish we didn't always recognize the facts as we do + Without realizing his cruelty, treated as a child + Woman harnessed with a dog to a cart + Wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests + Work he was so fond of and so weary of + Would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Their Silver Wedding Journey +by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY *** + +***** This file should be named 4646.txt or 4646.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/6/4/4646/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United 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We need your donations. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 +Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file. + + + +Title: Their Silver Wedding Journey, Complete + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4646] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on February 20, 2002] + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Their Silver Wedding Journey, by Howells +*********This file should be named wh4sw10.txt or wh4sw10.zip********** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, wh4sw11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, wh4sw10a.txt + + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +The "legal small print" and other information about this book +may now be found at the end of this file. Please read this +important information, as it gives you specific rights and +tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used. + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + + + +THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY, Complete + +By William Dean Howells + +Part I. + + + +I. + +"You need the rest," said the Business End; "and your wife wants you to +go, as well as your doctor. Besides, it's your Sabbatical year, and you, +could send back a lot of stuff for the magazine." + +"Is that your notion of a Sabbatical year?" asked the editor. + +"No; I throw that out as a bait to your conscience. You needn't write a +line while you're gone. I wish you wouldn't for your own sake; although +every number that hasn't got you in it is a back number for me." + +"That's very nice of you, Fulkerson," said the editor. "I suppose you +realize that it's nine years since we took 'Every Other Week' from +Dryfoos?" + +"Well, that makes it all the more Sabbatical," said Fulkerson. "The two +extra years that you've put in here, over and above the old style +Sabbatical seven, are just so much more to your credit. It was your +right to go, two years ago, and now it's your duty. Couldn't you look at +it in that light?" + +"I dare say Mrs. March could," the editor assented. "I don't believe she +could be brought to regard it as a pleasure on any other terms." + +"Of course not," said Fulkerson. "If you won't take a year, take three +months, and call it a Sabbatical summer; but go, anyway. You can make up +half a dozen numbers ahead, and Tom, here, knows your ways so well that +you needn't think about 'Every Other Week' from the time you start till +the time you try to bribe the customs inspector when you get back. I can +take a hack at the editing myself, if Tom's inspiration gives out, and +put a little of my advertising fire into the thing." He laid his hand on +the shoulder of the young fellow who stood smiling by, and pushed and +shook him in the liking there was between them. "Now you go, March! +Mrs. Fulkerson feels just as I do about it; we had our outing last year, +and we want Mrs. March and you to have yours. You let me go down and +engage your passage, and--" + +"No, no!" the editor rebelled. "I'll think about it;" but as he turned +to the work he was so fond of and so weary of, he tried not to think of +the question again, till he closed his desk in the afternoon, and started +to walk home; the doctor had said he ought to walk, and he did so, though +he longed to ride, and looked wistfully at the passing cars. + +He knew he was in a rut, as his wife often said; but if it was a rut, it +was a support too; it kept him from wobbling: She always talked as if the +flowery fields of youth lay on either side of the dusty road he had been +going so long, and he had but to step aside from it, to be among the +butterflies and buttercups again; he sometimes indulged this illusion, +himself, in a certain ironical spirit which caressed while it mocked the +notion. They had a tacit agreement that their youth, if they were ever +to find it again, was to be looked for in Europe, where they met when +they were young, and they had never been quite without the hope of going +back there, some day, for a long sojourn. They had not seen the time +when they could do so; they were dreamers, but, as they recognized, even +dreaming is not free from care; and in his dream March had been obliged +to work pretty steadily, if not too intensely. He had been forced to +forego the distinctly literary ambition with which he had started in life +because he had their common living to make, and he could not make it by +writing graceful verse, or even graceful prose. He had been many years +in a sufficiently distasteful business, and he had lost any thought of +leaving it when it left him, perhaps because his hold on it had always +been rather lax, and he had not been able to conceal that he disliked it. +At any rate, he was supplanted in his insurance agency at Boston by a +subordinate in his office, and though he was at the same time offered a +place of nominal credit in the employ of the company, he was able to +decline it in grace of a chance which united the charm of congenial work +with the solid advantage of a better salary than he had been getting for +work he hated. It was an incredible chance, but it was rendered +appreciably real by the necessity it involved that they should leave +Boston, where they had lived all their married life, where Mrs. March as +well as their children was born, and where all their tender and familiar +ties were, and come to New York, where the literary enterprise which +formed his chance was to be founded. + +It was then a magazine of a new sort, which his business partner had +imagined in such leisure as the management of a newspaper syndicate +afforded him, and had always thought of getting March to edit. The +magazine which is also a book has since been realized elsewhere on more +or less prosperous terms, but not for any long period, and 'Every Other +Week' was apparently--the only periodical of the kind conditioned for +survival. It was at first backed by unlimited capital, and it had the +instant favor of a popular mood, which has since changed, but which did +not change so soon that the magazine had not time to establish itself in +a wide acceptance. It was now no longer a novelty, it was no longer in +the maiden blush of its first success, but it had entered upon its second +youth with the reasonable hope of many years of prosperity before it. In +fact it was a very comfortable living for all concerned, and the Marches +had the conditions, almost dismayingly perfect, in which they had often +promised themselves to go and be young again in Europe, when they +rebelled at finding themselves elderly in America. Their daughter was +married, and so very much to her mother's mind that she did not worry +about her, even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a wild +frontier town to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon as he +left college, had taken hold on 'Every Other Week', under his father's +instruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him Fulkerson's +praise as a chip of the old block. These two liked each other, and +worked into each other's hands as cordially and aptly as Fulkerson and +March had ever done. It amused the father to see his son offering +Fulkerson the same deference which the Business End paid to seniority in +March himself; but in fact, Fulkerson's forehead was getting, as he said, +more intellectual every day; and the years were pushing them all along +together. + +Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one day he fell down in it. +He had a long sickness, and when he was well of it, he was so slow in +getting his grip of work again that he was sometimes deeply discouraged. +His wife shared his depression, whether he showed or whether he hid it, +and when the doctor advised his going abroad, she abetted the doctor with +all the strength of a woman's hygienic intuitions. March himself +willingly consented, at first; but as soon as he got strength for his +work, he began to temporize and to demur. He said that he believed it +would do him just as much good to go to Saratoga, where they always had +such a good time, as to go to Carlsbad; and Mrs. March had been obliged +several times to leave him to his own undoing; she always took him more +vigorously in hand afterwards. + + + + +II. + +When he got home from the 'Every Other Week' office, the afternoon of +that talk with the Business End, he wanted to laugh with his wife at +Fulkerson's notion of a Sabbatical year. She did not think it was so +very droll; she even urged it seriously against him, as if she had now +the authority of Holy Writ for forcing him abroad; she found no relish of +absurdity in the idea that it was his duty to take this rest which had +been his right before. + +He abandoned himself to a fancy which had been working to the surface of +his thought. "We could call it our Silver Wedding Journey, and go round +to all the old places, and see them in the reflected light of the past." + +"Oh, we could!" she responded, passionately; and he had now the delicate +responsibility of persuading her that he was joking. + +He could think of nothing better than a return to Fulkerson's absurdity. +"It would be our Silver Wedding Journey just as it would be my Sabbatical +year--a good deal after date. But I suppose that would make it all the +more silvery." + +She faltered in her elation. "Didn't you say a Sabbatical year +yourself?" she demanded. + +"Fulkerson said it; but it was a figurative expression." + +"And I suppose the Silver Wedding Journey was a figurative expression +too!" + +"It was a notion that tempted me; I thought you would enjoy it. Don't +you suppose I should be glad too, if we could go over, and find ourselves +just as we were when we first met there?" + +"No; I don't believe now that you care anything about it." + +"Well, it couldn't be done, anyway; so that doesn't matter." + +"It could be done, if you were a mind to think so. And it would be the +greatest inspiration to you. You are always longing for some chance to +do original work, to get away from your editing, but you've let the time +slip by without really trying to do anything; I don't call those little +studies of yours in the magazine anything; and now you won't take the +chance that's almost forcing itself upon you. You could write an +original book of the nicest kind; mix up travel and fiction; get some +love in." + +"Oh, that's the stalest kind of thing!" + +"Well, but you could see it from a perfectly new point of view. You +could look at it as a sort of dispassionate witness, and treat it +humorously--of course it is ridiculous--and do something entirely fresh." + +"It wouldn't work. It would be carrying water on both shoulders. The +fiction would kill the travel, the travel would kill the fiction; the +love and the humor wouldn't mingle any more than oil and vinegar." + +"Well, and what is better than a salad?" + +"But this would be all salad-dressing, and nothing to put it on." She +was silent, and he yielded to another fancy. "We might imagine coming +upon our former selves over there, and travelling round with them-- +a wedding journey 'en partie carree'." + +"Something like that. I call it a very poetical idea," she said with a +sort of provisionality, as if distrusting another ambush. + +"It isn't so bad," he admitted. "How young we were, in those days!" + +"Too young to know what a good time we were having," she said, relaxing +her doubt for the retrospect. "I don't feel as if I really saw Europe, +then; I was too inexperienced, too ignorant, too simple. I would like to +go, just to make sure that I had been." He was smiling again in the way +he had when anything occurred to him that amused him, and she demanded, +"What is it?" + +"Nothing. I was wishing we could go in the consciousness of people who +actually hadn't been before--carry them all through Europe, and let them +see it in the old, simple-hearted American way." + +She shook her head. "You couldn't! They've all been!" + +"All but about sixty or seventy millions," said March. + +"Well, those are just the millions you don't know, and couldn't imagine." + +"I'm not so sure of that." + +"And even if you could imagine them, you couldn't make them interesting. +All the interesting ones have been, anyway." + +"Some of the uninteresting ones too. I used, to meet some of that sort +over there. I believe I would rather chance it for my pleasure with +those that hadn't been." + +"Then why not do it? I know you could get something out of it." + +"It might be a good thing," he mused, "to take a couple who had passed +their whole life here in New York, too poor and too busy ever to go; and +had a perfect famine for Europe all the time. I could have them spend +their Sunday afternoons going aboard the different boats, and looking up +their accommodations. I could have them sail, in imagination, and +discover an imaginary Europe, and give their grotesque misconceptions of +it from travels and novels against a background of purely American +experience. We needn't go abroad to manage that. I think it would be +rather nice." + +"I don't think it would be nice in the least," said Mrs. March, "and if +you don't want to talk seriously, I would rather not talk at all." + +"Well, then, let's talk about our Silver Wedding Journey." + +"I see. You merely want to tease and I am not in the humor for it." + +She said this in a great many different ways, and then she was really +silent. He perceived that she was hurt; and he tried to win her back to +good-humor. He asked her if she would not like to go over to Hoboken and +look at one of the Hanseatic League steamers, some day; and she refused. +When he sent the next day and got a permit to see the boat; she consented +to go. + + + + +III. + +He was one of those men who live from the inside outward; he often took a +hint for his actions from his fancies; and now because he had fancied +some people going to look at steamers on Sundays, he chose the next +Sunday himself for their visit to the Hanseatic boat at Hoboken. To be +sure it was a leisure day with him, but he might have taken the afternoon +of any other day, for that matter, and it was really that invisible +thread of association which drew him. + +The Colmannia had been in long enough to have made her toilet for the +outward voyage, and was looking her best. She was tipped and edged with +shining brass, without and within, and was red-carpeted and white-painted +as only a ship knows how to be. A little uniformed steward ran before +the visitors, and showed them through the dim white corridors into +typical state-rooms on the different decks; and then let them verify +their first impression of the grandeur of the dining-saloon, and the +luxury of the ladies' parlor and music-room. March made his wife observe +that the tables and sofas and easy-chairs, which seemed so carelessly +scattered about, were all suggestively screwed fast to the floor against +rough weather; and he amused himself with the heavy German browns and +greens and coppers in the decorations, which he said must have been +studied in color from sausage, beer, and spinach, to the effect of those +large march-panes in the roof. She laughed with him at the tastelessness +of the race which they were destined to marvel at more and more; but she +made him own that the stewardesses whom they saw were charmingly like +serving-maids in the 'Fliegende Blatter'; when they went ashore she +challenged his silence for some assent to her own conclusion that the +Colmannia was perfect. + +"She has only one fault," he assented. "She's a ship." + +"Yes," said his wife, "and I shall want to look at the Norumbia before I +decide." + +Then he saw that it was only a question which steamer they should take, +and not whether they should take any. He explained, at first gently and +afterwards savagely, that their visit to the Colmannia was quite enough +for him, and that the vessel was not built that he would be willing to +cross the Atlantic in. + +When a man has gone so far as that he has committed himself to the +opposite course in almost so many words; and March was neither surprised +nor abashed when he discovered himself, before they reached home, +offering his wife many reasons why they should go to Europe. She +answered to all, No, he had made her realize the horror of it so much +that she was glad to give it up. She gave it up, with the best feeling; +all that she would ask of him was that he should never mention Europe to +her again. She could imagine how much he disliked to go, if such a ship +as the Colmannia did not make him want to go. + +At the bottom of his heart he knew that he had not used her very well. +He had kindled her fancy with those notions of a Sabbatical year and a +Silver Wedding Journey, and when she was willing to renounce both he had +persisted in taking her to see the ship, only to tell her afterwards that +he would not go abroad on any account. It was by a psychological juggle +which some men will understand that he allowed himself the next day to +get the sailings of the Norumbia from the steamship office; he also got +a plan of the ship showing the most available staterooms, so that they +might be able to choose between her and the Colmannia from all the facts. + + + + + +IV. + +From this time their decision to go was none the less explicit because so +perfectly tacit. + +They began to amass maps and guides. She got a Baedeker for Austria and +he got a Bradshaw for the continent, which was never of the least use +there, but was for the present a mine of unavailable information. He got +a phrase-book, too, and tried to rub up his German. He used to read +German, when he was a boy, with a young enthusiasm for its romantic +poetry, and now, for the sake of Schiller and Uhland and Heine, he held +imaginary conversations with a barber, a bootmaker, and a banker, and +tried to taste the joy which he had not known in the language of those +poets for a whole generation. He perceived, of course, that unless the +barber, the bootmaker, and the banker answered him in terms which the +author of the phrase-book directed them to use, he should not get on with +them beyond his first question; but he did not allow this to spoil his +pleasure in it. In fact, it was with a tender emotion that he realized +how little the world, which had changed in everything else so greatly, +had changed in its ideal of a phrase-book. + +Mrs. March postponed the study of her Baedeker to the time and place for +it; and addressed herself to the immediate business of ascertaining the +respective merits of the Colmannia and Norumbia. She carried on her +researches solely among persons of her own sex; its experiences were +alone of that positive character which brings conviction, and she valued +them equally at first or second hand. She heard of ladies who would not +cross in any boat but the Colmannia, and who waited for months to get a +room on her; she talked with ladies who said that nothing would induce +them to cross in her. There were ladies who said she had twice the +motion that the Norumbia had, and the vibration from her twin screws was +frightful; it always was, on those twin-screw boats, and it did not +affect their testimony with Mrs. March that the Norumbia was a twin-screw +boat too. It was repeated to her in the third or fourth degree of hear- +say that the discipline on the Colmannia was as perfect as that on the +Cunarders; ladies whose friends had tried every line assured her that the +table of the Norumbia was almost as good as the table of the French +boats. To the best of the belief of lady witnesses still living who had +friends on board, the Colmannia had once got aground, and the Norumbia +had once had her bridge carried off by a tidal wave; or it might be the +Colmannia; they promised to ask and let her know. Their lightest word +availed with her against the most solemn assurances of their husbands, +fathers, or brothers, who might be all very well on land, but in +navigation were not to be trusted; they would say anything from a +reckless and culpable optimism. She obliged March all the same to ask +among them, but she recognized their guilty insincerity when he came home +saying that one man had told him you could have played croquet on the +deck of the Colmannia the whole way over when he crossed, and another +that he never saw the racks on in three passages he had made in the +Norumbia. + +The weight of evidence was, he thought, in favor of the Norumbia, but +when they went another Sunday to Hoboken, and saw the ship, Mrs. March +liked her so much less than the Colmannia that she could hardly wait for +Monday to come; she felt sure all the good rooms on the Colmannia would +be gone before they could engage one. + +From a consensus of the nerves of all the ladies left in town so late in +the season, she knew that the only place on any steamer where your room +ought to be was probably just where they could not get it. If you went +too high, you felt the rolling terribly, and people tramping up and down +on the promenade under your window kept you awake the whole night; if you +went too low, you felt the engine thump, thump, thump in your head the +whole way over. If you went too far forward, you got the pitching; if +you went aft, on the kitchen side, you got the smell of the cooking. The +only place, really, was just back of the dining-saloon on the south side +of the ship; it was smooth there, and it was quiet, and you had the sun +in your window all the way over. He asked her if he must take their room +there or nowhere, and she answered that he must do his best, but that she +would not be satisfied with any other place. + +In his despair he went down to the steamer office, and took a room which +one of the clerks said was the best. When he got home, it appeared from +reference to the ship's plan that it was the very room his wife had +wanted from the beginning, and she praised him as if he had used a wisdom +beyond his sex in getting it. + +He was in the enjoyment of his unmerited honor when a belated lady came +with her husband for an evening call, before going into the country. At +sight of the plans of steamers on the Marches' table, she expressed the +greatest wonder and delight that they were going to Europe. They had +supposed everybody knew it, by this time, but she said she had not heard +a word of it; and she went on with some felicitations which March found +rather unduly filial. In getting a little past the prime of life he did +not like to be used with too great consideration of his years, and he did +not think that he and his wife were so old that they need be treated as +if they were going on a golden wedding journey, and heaped with all sorts +of impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much and being so much +the better for the little outing! Under his breath, he confounded this +lady for her impudence; but he schooled himself to let her rejoice at +their going on a Hanseatic boat, because the Germans were always so +careful of you. She made her husband agree with her, and it came out +that he had crossed several times on both the Colmannia and the Norumbia. +He volunteered to say that the Colmannia, was a capital sea-boat; she did +not have her nose under water all the time; she was steady as a rock; and +the captain and the kitchen were simply out of sight; some people did +call her unlucky. + +"Unlucky?" Mrs. March echoed, faintly. "Why do they call her unlucky?" + +"Oh, I don't know. People will say anything about any boat. You know +she broke her shaft, once, and once she got caught in the ice." + +Mrs. March joined him in deriding the superstition of people, and she +parted gayly with this over-good young couple. As soon as they were +gone, March knew that she would say: "You must change that ticket, my +dear. We will go in the Norumbia." + +"Suppose I can't get as good a room on the Norumbia?" + +"Then we must stay." + +In the morning after a night so bad that it was worse than no night at +all, she said she would go to the steamship office with him and question +them up about the Colmannia. The people there had never heard she was +called an unlucky boat; they knew of nothing disastrous in her history. +They were so frank and so full in their denials, and so kindly patient of +Mrs. March's anxieties, that he saw every word was carrying conviction of +their insincerity to her. At the end she asked what rooms were left on +the Norumbia, and the clerk whom they had fallen to looked through his +passenger list with a shaking head. He was afraid there was nothing they +would like. + +"But we would take anything," she entreated, and March smiled to think of +his innocence in supposing for a moment that she had ever dreamed of not +going. + +"We merely want the best," he put in. "One flight up, no noise or dust, +with sun in all the windows, and a place for fire on rainy days." + +They must be used to a good deal of American joking which they do not +understand, in the foreign steamship offices. The clerk turned +unsmilingly to one of his superiors and asked him some question in German +which March could not catch, perhaps because it formed no part of a +conversation with a barber, a bootmaker or a banker. A brief drama +followed, and then the clerk pointed to a room on the plan of the +Norumbia and said it had just been given up, and they could have it if +they decided to take it at once. + +They looked, and it was in the very place of their room on the Colmannia; +it was within one of being the same number. It was so providential, if +it was providential at all, that they were both humbly silent a moment; +even Mrs. March was silent. In this supreme moment she would not prompt +her husband by a word, a glance, and it was from his own free will that +he said, "We will take it." + +He thought it was his free will, but perhaps one's will is never free; +and this may have been an instance of pure determinism from all the +events before it. No event that followed affected it, though the day +after they had taken their passage on the Norumbia he heard that she had +once been in the worst sort of storm in the month of August. He felt +obliged to impart the fact to his wife, but she said that it proved +nothing for or against the ship, and confounded him more by her reason +than by all her previous unreason. Reason is what a man is never +prepared for in women; perhaps because he finds it so seldom in men. + + + + +V. + +During nearly the whole month that now passed before the date of sailing +it seemed to March that in some familiar aspects New York had never been +so interesting. He had not easily reconciled himself to the place after +his many years of Boston; but he had got used to the ugly grandeur, to +the noise and the rush, and he had divined more and more the careless +good-nature and friendly indifference of the vast, sprawling, ungainly +metropolis. There were happy moments when he felt a poetry unintentional +and unconscious in it, and he thought there was no point more favorable +for the sense of this than Stuyvesant Square, where they had a flat. +Their windows looked down into its tree-tops, and across them to the +truncated towers of St. George's, and to the plain red-brick, white- +trimmed front of the Friends' Meeting House; he came and went between his +dwelling and his office through the two places that form the square, and +after dinner his wife and he had a habit of finding seats by one of the +fountains in Livingston Place, among the fathers and mothers of the +hybrid East Side children swarming there at play. The elders read their +English or Italian or German or Yiddish journals, or gossiped, or merely +sat still and stared away the day's fatigue; while the little ones raced +in and out among them, crying and laughing, quarrelling and kissing. +Sometimes a mother darted forward and caught her child from the brink of +the basin; another taught hers to walk, holding it tightly up behind by +its short skirts; another publicly nursed her baby to sleep. + +While they still dreamed, but never thought, of going to Europe, the +Marches often said how European all this was; if these women had brought +their knitting or sewing it would have been quite European; but as soon +as they had decided to go, it all began to seem poignantly American. In +like manner, before the conditions of their exile changed, and they still +pined for the Old World, they contrived a very agreeable illusion of it +by dining now and then at an Austrian restaurant in Union Square; but +later when they began to be homesick for the American scenes they had not +yet left, they had a keener retrospective joy in the strictly New York +sunset they were bowed out into. + +The sunsets were uncommonly characteristic that May in Union Square. +They were the color of the red stripes in the American flag, and when +they were seen through the delirious architecture of the Broadway side, +or down the perspective of the cross-streets, where the elevated trains +silhouetted themselves against their pink, they imparted a feeling of +pervasive Americanism in which all impression of alien savors and +civilities was lost. One evening a fire flamed up in Hoboken, and burned +for hours against the west, in the lurid crimson tones of a conflagration +as memorably and appealingly native as the colors of the sunset. + +The weather for nearly the whole month was of a mood familiar enough in +our early summer, and it was this which gave the sunsets their vitreous +pink. A thrilling coolness followed a first blaze of heat, and in the +long respite the thoughts almost went back to winter flannels. But at +last a hot wave was telegraphed from the West, and the week before the +Norumbia sailed was an anguish of burning days and breathless nights, +which fused all regrets and reluctances in the hope of escape, and made +the exiles of two continents long for the sea, with no care for either +shore. + + + + +VI. + +Their steamer was to sail early; they were up at dawn because they had +scarcely lain down, and March crept out into the square for a last breath +of its morning air before breakfast. He was now eager to be gone; he had +broken with habit, and he wished to put all traces of the past out of +sight. But this was curiously like all other early mornings in his +consciousness, and he could not alienate himself from the wonted +environment. He stood talking on every-day terms of idle speculation +with the familiar policeman, about a stray parrot in the top of one of +the trees, where it screamed and clawed at the dead branch to which it +clung. Then he went carelessly indoors again as if he were secure of +reading the reporter's story of it in that next day's paper which he +should not see. + +The sense of an inseverable continuity persisted through the breakfast, +which was like other breakfasts in the place they would be leaving in +summer shrouds just as they always left it at the end of June. The +illusion was even heightened by the fact that their son was to be in the +apartment all summer, and it would not be so much shut up as usual. The +heavy trunks had been sent to the ship by express the afternoon before, +and they had only themselves and their stateroom baggage to transport to +Hoboken; they came down to a carriage sent from a neighboring livery- +stable, and exchanged good-mornings with a driver they knew by name. + +March had often fancied it a chief advantage of living in New York that +you could drive to the steamer and start for Europe as if you were +starting for Albany; he was in the enjoyment of this advantage now, but +somehow it was not the consolation he had expected. He knew, of course, +that if they had been coming from Boston, for instance, to sail in the +Norumbia, they would probably have gone on board the night before, and +sweltered through its heat among the strange smells and noises of the +dock and wharf, instead of breakfasting at their own table, and smoothly +bowling down the asphalt on to the ferryboat, and so to the very foot of +the gangway at the ship's side, all in the cool of the early morning. +But though he had now the cool of the early morning on these conditions, +there was by no means enough of it. + +The sun was already burning the life out of the air, with the threat of +another day of the terrible heat that had prevailed for a week past; and +that last breakfast at home had not been gay, though it had been lively, +in a fashion, through Mrs. March's efforts to convince her son that she +did not want him to come and see them off. Of, her daughter's coming all +the way from Chicago there was no question, and she reasoned that if he +did not come to say good-by on board it would be the same as if they were +not going. + +"Don't you want to go?" March asked with an obscure resentment. + +"I don't want to seem to go," she said, with the calm of those who have +logic on their side. + +As she drove away with her husband she was not so sure of her +satisfaction in the feint she had arranged, though when she saw the +ghastly partings of people on board, she was glad she had not allowed her +son to come. She kept saying this to herself, and when they climbed to +the ship from the wharf, and found themselves in the crowd that choked +the saloons and promenades and passages and stairways and landings, she +said it more than once to her husband. + +She heard weary elders pattering empty politenesses of farewell with +friends who had come to see them off, as they stood withdrawn in such +refuges as the ship's architecture afforded, or submitted to be pushed +and twirled about by the surging throng when they got in its way. She +pitied these in their affliction, which she perceived that they could not +lighten or shorten, but she had no patience with the young girls, who +broke into shrieks of nervous laughter at the coming of certain young +men, and kept laughing and beckoning till they made the young men see +them; and then stretched their hands to them and stood screaming and +shouting to them across the intervening heads and shoulders. Some girls, +of those whom no one had come to bid good-by, made themselves merry, +or at least noisy, by rushing off to the dining-room and looking at the +cards on the bouquets heaping the tables, to find whether any one had +sent them flowers. Others whom young men had brought bunches of violets +hid their noses in them, and dropped their fans and handkerchiefs and +card-cases, and thanked the young men for picking them up. Others, had +got places in the music-room, and sat there with open boxes of long- +stemmed roses in their laps, and talked up into the faces of the men, +with becoming lifts and slants of their eyes and chins. In the midst of +the turmoil children struggled against people's feet and knees, and +bewildered mothers flew at the ship's officers and battered them with +questions alien to their respective functions as they amiably stifled +about in their thick uniforms. + +Sailors, slung over the ship's side on swinging seats, were placidly +smearing it with paint at that last moment; the bulwarks were thickly set +with the heads and arms of passengers who were making signs to friends on +shore, or calling messages to them that lost themselves in louder noises +midway. Some of the women in the steerage were crying; they were +probably not going to Europe for pleasure like the first-cabin +passengers, or even for their health; on the wharf below March saw the +face of one young girl twisted with weeping, and he wished he had not +seen it. He turned from it, and looked into the eyes of his son, who was +laughing at his shoulder. He said that he had to come down with a good- +by letter from his sister, which he made an excuse for following them; +but he had always meant to see them off, he owned. The letter had just +come with a special delivery stamp, and it warned them that she had sent +another good-by letter with some flowers on board. Mrs. March scolded at +them both, but with tears in her eyes, and in the renewed stress of +parting which he thought he had put from him, March went on taking note, +as with alien senses, of the scene before him, while they all talked on +together, and repeated the nothings they had said already. + +A rank odor of beet-root sugar rose from the far-branching sheds where +some freight steamers of the line lay, and seemed to mingle chemically +with the noise which came up from the wharf next to the Norumbia. The +mass of spectators deepened and dimmed away into the shadow of the roofs, +and along their front came files of carriages and trucks and carts, and +discharged the arriving passengers and their baggage, and were lost in +the crowd, which they penetrated like slow currents, becoming clogged and +arrested from time to time, and then beginning to move again. + +The passengers incessantly mounted by the canvas-draped galleries +leading, fore and aft, into the ship. Bareheaded, blue-jacketed, brass- +buttoned stewards dodged skillfully in and out among them with their +hand-bags, holdalls, hat-boxes, and state-room trunks, and ran before +them into the different depths and heights where they hid these burdens, +and then ran back for more. Some of the passengers followed them and +made sure that their things were put in the right places; most of them +remained wedged among the earlier comers, or pushed aimlessly in and out +of the doors of the promenades. + +The baggage for the hold continually rose in huge blocks from the wharf, +with a loud clucking of the tackle, and sank into the open maw of the +ship, momently gathering herself for her long race seaward, with harsh +hissings and rattlings and gurglings. There was no apparent reason why +it should all or any of it end, but there came a moment when there began +to be warnings that were almost threats of the end. The ship's whistle +sounded, as if marking a certain interval; and Mrs. March humbly +entreated, sternly commanded, her son to go ashore, or else be carried to +Europe. They disputed whether that was the last signal or not; she was +sure it was, and she appealed to March, who was moved against his reason. +He affected to talk calmly with his son, and gave him some last charges +about 'Every Other Week'. + +Some people now interrupted their leave-taking; but the arriving +passengers only arrived more rapidly at the gang-ways; the bulks of +baggage swung more swiftly into the air. A bell rang, and there rose +women's cries, "Oh, that is the shore-bell!" and men's protests, "It is +only the first bell! "More and more began to descend the gangways, fore +and aft, and soon outnumbered those who were coming aboard. + +March tried not to be nervous about his son's lingering; he was ashamed +of his anxiety; but he said in a low voice, "Better be off, Tom." + +His mother now said she did not care if Tom were really carried to +Europe; and at last he said, Well, he guessed he must go ashore, as if +there had been no question of that before; and then she clung to him and +would not let him go; but she acquired merit with herself at last by +pushing him into the gangway with her own hands: he nodded and waved his +hat from its foot, and mixed with the crowd. + +Presently there was hardly any one coming aboard, and the sailors began +to undo the lashings of the gangways from the ship's side; files of men +on the wharf laid hold of their rails; the stewards guarding their +approach looked up for the signal to come aboard; and in vivid pantomime +forbade some belated leavetakers to ascend. These stood aside, +exchanging bows and grins with the friends whom they could not reach; +they all tried to make one another hear some last words. The moment came +when the saloon gangway was detached; then it was pulled ashore, and the +section of the bulwarks opening to it was locked, not to be unlocked on +this side of the world. An indefinable impulse communicated itself to +the steamer: while it still seemed motionless it moved. The thick spread +of faces on the wharf, which had looked at times like some sort of +strange flowers in a level field, broke into a universal tremor, and the +air above them was filled with hats and handkerchiefs, as if with the +flight of birds rising from the field. + +The Marches tried to make out their son's face; they believed that they +did; but they decided that they had not seen him, and his mother said +that she was glad; it would only have made it harder to bear, though she +was glad he had come over to say good-by it had seemed so unnatural that +he should not, when everybody else was saying good-by. + +On the wharf color was now taking the place of form; the scene ceased to +have the effect of an instantaneous photograph; it was like an +impressionistic study. As the ship swung free of the shed and got into +the stream, the shore lost reality. Up to a certain moment, all was +still New York, all was even Hoboken; then amidst the grotesque and +monstrous shows of the architecture on either shore March felt himself at +sea and on the way to Europe. + +The fact was accented by the trouble people were already making with the +deck-steward about their steamer chairs, which they all wanted put in the +best places, and March, with a certain heart-ache, was involuntarily +verifying the instant in which he ceased to be of his native shores, +while still in full sight of them, when he suddenly reverted to them, and +as it were landed on them again in an incident that held him breathless. +A man, bareheaded, and with his arms flung wildly abroad, came flying +down the promenade from the steerage. "Capitan! Capitan! There is a +woman!" he shouted in nondescript English. "She must go hout! She must +go hout!" Some vital fact imparted itself to the ship's command and +seemed to penetrate to the ship's heart; she stopped, as if with a sort +of majestic relenting. A tug panted to her side, and lifted a ladder to +it; the bareheaded man, and a woman gripping a baby in her arms, sprawled +safely down its rungs to the deck of the tug, and the steamer moved +seaward again. + +"What is it? Oh, what is it?" his wife demanded of March's share of +their common ignorance. A young fellow passing stopped, as if arrested +by the tragic note in her voice, and explained that the woman had left +three little children locked up in her tenement while she came to bid +some friends on board good-by. + +He passed on, and Mrs. March said, "What a charming face he had!" even +before she began to wreak upon that wretched mother the overwrought +sympathy which makes good women desire the punishment of people who have +escaped danger. She would not hear any excuse for her. "Her children +oughtn't to have been out of her mind for an instant." + +"Don't you want to send back a line to ours by the pilot?" March asked. + +She started from him. "Oh, was I really beginning to forget them?" + +In the saloon where people were scattered about writing pilot's letters +she made him join her in an impassioned epistle of farewell, which once +more left none of the nothings unsaid that they had many times +reiterated. She would not let him put the stamp on, for fear it would +not stick, and she had an agonizing moment of doubt whether it ought not +to be a German stamp; she was not pacified till the steward in charge of +the mail decided. + +"I shouldn't have forgiven myself," March said, "if we hadn't let Tom +know that twenty minutes after he left us we were still alive and well." + +"It's to Bella, too," she reasoned. + +He found her making their state-room look homelike with their familiar +things when he came with their daughter's steamer letter and the flowers +and fruit she had sent. She said, Very well, they would all keep, and +went on with her unpacking. He asked her if she did not think these home +things made it rather ghastly, and she said if he kept on in that way she +should certainly go back on the pilot-boat. He perceived that her nerves +were spent. He had resisted the impulse to an ill-timed joke about the +life-preservers under their berths when the sound of the breakfast-horn, +wavering first in the distance, found its way nearer and clearer down +their corridor. + + + + +VII. + +In one of the many visits to the steamship office which his wife's +anxieties obliged him to make, March had discussed the question of seats +in the dining-saloon. At first he had his ambition for the captain's +table, but they convinced him more easily than he afterwards convinced +Mrs. March that the captain's table had become a superstition of the +past, and conferred no special honor. It proved in the event that the +captain of the Norumbia had the good feeling to dine in a lower saloon +among the passengers who paid least for their rooms. But while the +Marches were still in their ignorance of this, they decided to get what +adventure they could out of letting the head steward put them where he +liked, and they came in to breakfast with a careless curiosity to see +what he had done for them. + +There seemed scarcely a vacant place in the huge saloon; through the oval +openings in the centre they looked down into the lower saloon and up into +the music-room, as thickly thronged with breakfasters. The tables were +brightened with the bouquets and the floral designs of ships, anchors, +harps, and doves sent to the lady passengers, and at one time the Marches +thought they were going to be put before a steam-yacht realized to the +last detail in blue and white violets. The ports of the saloon were +open, and showed the level sea; the ship rode with no motion except the +tremor from her screws. The sound of talking and laughing rose with the +clatter of knives and forks and the clash of crockery; the homely smell +of the coffee and steak and fish mixed with the spice of the roses and +carnations; the stewards ran hither and thither, and a young foolish joy +of travel welled up in the elderly hearts of the pair. When the head +steward turned out the swivel-chairs where they were to sit they both +made an inclination toward the people already at table, as if it had been +a company at some far-forgotten table d'hote in the later sixties. The +head steward seemed to understand as well as speak English, but the +table-stewards had only an effect of English, which they eked out with +"Bleace!" for all occasions of inquiry, apology, or reassurance, as the +equivalent of their native "Bitte!" Otherwise there was no reason to +suppose that they did not speak German, which was the language of a good +half of the passengers. The stewards looked English, however, in +conformity to what seems the ideal of every kind of foreign seafaring +people, and that went a good way toward making them intelligible. + +March, to whom his wife mainly left their obeisance, made it so tentative +that if it should meet no response he could feel that it had been nothing +more than a forward stoop, such as was natural in sitting down. He need +not really have taken this precaution; those whose eyes he caught more or +less nodded in return. + +A nice-looking boy of thirteen or fourteen, who had the place on the left +of the lady in the sofa seat under the port, bowed with almost +magisterial gravity, and made the lady on the sofa smile, as if she were +his mother and understood him. March decided that she had been some time +a widow; and he easily divined that the young couple on her right had +been so little time husband and wife that they would rather not have it +known. Next them was a young lady whom he did not at first think so +good-looking as she proved later to be, though she had at once a pretty +nose, with a slight upward slant at the point, long eyes under fallen +lashes, a straight forehead, not too high, and a mouth which perhaps the +exigencies of breakfasting did not allow all its characteristic charm. +She had what Mrs. March thought interesting hair, of a dull black, +roughly rolled away from her forehead and temples in a fashion not +particularly becoming to her, and she had the air of not looking so well +as she might if she had chosen. The elderly man on her right, it was +easy to see, was her father; they had a family likeness, though his fair +hair, now ashen with age, was so different from hers. He wore his beard +cut in the fashion of the Second Empire, with a Louis Napoleonic +mustache, imperial, and chin tuft; his neat head was cropt close; and +there was something Gallic in its effect and something remotely military: +he had blue eyes, really less severe than he meant, though be frowned a +good deal, and managed them with glances of a staccato quickness, as if +challenging a potential disagreement with his opinions. + +The gentleman on his right, who sat at the head of the table, was of the +humorous, subironical American expression, and a smile at the corner of +his kindly mouth, under an iron-gray full beard cut short, at once +questioned and tolerated the new-comers as he glanced at them. He +responded to March's bow almost as decidedly as the nice boy, whose +mother he confronted at the other end of the table, and with his comely +bulk formed an interesting contrast to her vivid slightness. She was +brilliantly dark, behind the gleam of the gold-rimmed glasses perched on +her pretty nose. + +If the talk had been general before the Marches came, it did not at once +renew itself in that form. Nothing was said while they were having their +first struggle with the table-stewards, who repeated the order as if to +show how fully they had misunderstood it. The gentleman at the head of +the table intervened at last, and then, "I'm obliged to you," March said, +for your German. I left mine in a phrase-book in my other coat pocket." + +"Oh, I wasn't speaking German," said the other. "It was merely their kind +of English." + +The company were in the excitement of a novel situation which disposes +people to acquaintance, and this exchange of small pleasantries made +every one laugh, except the father and daughter; but they had the effect +of being tacitly amused. + +The mother of the nice boy said to Mrs. March, "You may not get what you +ordered, but it will be good." + +"Even if you don't know what it is!" said the young bride, and then +blushed, as if she had been too bold. + +Mrs. March liked the blush and the young bride for it, and she asked, +"Have you ever been on one of these German boats before? They seem very +comfortable." + +"Oh, dear, no! we've never been on any boat before." She made a little +petted mouth of deprecation, and added, simple-heartedly, "My husband was +going out on business, and he thought he might as well take me along." + +The husband seemed to feel himself brought in by this, and said he did +not see why they should not make it a pleasure-trip, too. They put +themselves in a position to be patronized by their deference, and in the +pauses of his talk with the gentleman at the head of the table, March +heard his wife abusing their inexperience to be unsparingly instructive +about European travel. He wondered whether she would be afraid to own +that it was nearly thirty years since she had crossed the ocean; though +that might seem recent to people who had never crossed at all. + +They listened with respect as she boasted in what an anguish of wisdom +she had decided between the Colmannia and the Norumbia. The wife said +she did not know there was such a difference in steamers, but when Mrs. +March perfervidly assured her that there was all the difference in the +world, she submitted and said she supposed she ought to be thankful that +they, had hit upon the right one. They had telegraphed for berths and +taken what was given them; their room seemed to be very nice. + +"Oh," said Mrs. March, and her husband knew that she was saying it to +reconcile them to the inevitable, "all the rooms on the Norumbia are +nice. The only difference is that if they are on the south side you have +the sun." + +"I'm not sure which is the south side," said the bride. "We seem to have +been going west ever since we started, and I feel as if we should reach +home in the morning if we had a good night. Is the ocean always so +smooth as this?" + +"Oh, dear, no!" said Mrs. March. "It's never so smooth as this," and she +began to be outrageously authoritative about the ocean weather. She +ended by declaring that the June passages were always good, and that if +the ship kept a southerly course they would have no fogs and no icebergs. +She looked round, and caught her husband's eye. "What is it? Have I +been bragging? Well, you understand," she added to the bride, "I've only +been over once, a great while ago, and I don't really know anything about +it," and they laughed together. "But I talked so much with people after +we decided to go, that I feel as if I had been a hundred times." + +"I know," said the other lady, with caressing intelligence. "That is +just the way with--" She stopped, and looked at the young man whom the +head steward was bringing up to take the vacant place next to March. He +came forward, stuffing his cap into the pocket of his blue serge sack, +and smiled down on the company with such happiness in his gay eyes that +March wondered what chance at this late day could have given any human +creature his content so absolute, and what calamity could be lurking +round the corner to take it out of him. The new-comer looked at March as +if he knew him, and March saw at a second glance that he was the young +fellow who had told him about the mother put off after the start. He +asked him whether there was any change in the weather yet outside, and he +answered eagerly, as if the chance to put his happiness into the mere +sound of words were a favor done him, that their ship had just spoken one +of the big Hanseatic mailboats, and she had signalled back that she had +met ice; so that they would probably keep a southerly course, and not +have it cooler till they were off the Banks. + +The mother of the boy said, "I thought we must be off the Banks when I +came out of my room, but it was only the electric fan at the foot of the +stairs." + +"That was what I thought," said Mrs. March. "I almost sent my husband +back for my shawl!" Both the ladies laughed and liked each other for +their common experience. + +The gentleman at the head of the table said, "They ought to have fans +going there by that pillar, or else close the ports. They only let in +heat." + +They easily conformed to the American convention of jocosity in their +talk; it perhaps no more represents the individual mood than the +convention of dulness among other people; but it seemed to make the young +man feel at home. + +"Why, do you think it's uncomfortably warm?" he asked, from what March +perceived to be a meteorology of his own. He laughed and added, "It is +pretty summerlike," as if he had not thought of it before. He talked of +the big mail-boat, and said he would like to cross on such a boat as +that, and then he glanced at the possible advantage of having your own +steam-yacht like the one which he said they had just passed, so near that +you could see what a good time the people were having on board. He began +to speak to the Marches; his talk spread to the young couple across the +table; it visited the mother on the sofa in a remark which she might +ignore without apparent rejection, and without really avoiding the boy, +it glanced off toward the father and daughter, from whom it fell, to rest +with the gentleman at the head of the table. + +It was not that the father and daughter had slighted his overture, if it +was so much as that, but that they were tacitly preoccupied, or were of +some philosophy concerning their fellow-breakfasters which did not suffer +them, for the present, at least, to share in the common friendliness. +This is an attitude sometimes produced in people by a sense of just, or +even unjust, superiority; sometimes by serious trouble; sometimes by +transient annoyance. The cause was not so deep-seated but Mrs. March, +before she rose from her place, believed that she had detected a slant of +the young lady's eyes, from under her lashes, toward the young man; and +she leaped to a conclusion concerning them in a matter where all logical +steps are impertinent. She did not announce her arrival at this point +till the young man had overtaken her before she got out of the saloon, +and presented the handkerchief she had dropped under the table. + +He went away with her thanks, and then she said to her husband, "Well, +he's perfectly charming, and I don't wonder she's taken with him; that +kind of cold girl would be, though I'm not sure that she is cold. She's +interesting, and you could see that he thought so, the more he looked at +her; I could see him looking at her from the very first instant; he +couldn't keep his eyes off her; she piqued his curiosity, and made him +wonder about her." + +"Now, look here, Isabel! This won't do. I can stand a good deal, but I +sat between you and that young fellow, and you couldn't tell whether he +was looking at that girl or not." + +"I could! I could tell by the expression of her face." + +"Oh, well! If it's gone as far as that with you, I give it up. When are +you going to have them married?" + +"Nonsense! I want you to find out who all those people are. How are you +going to do it?" + +"Perhaps the passenger list will say," he suggested. + + + + +VIII. + +The list did not say of itself, but with the help of the head steward's +diagram it said that the gentleman at the head of the table was Mr. R. +M. Kenby; the father and the daughter were Mr. E. B. Triscoe and Miss +Triscoe; the bridal pair were Mr. and Mrs. Leffers; the mother and her +son were Mrs. Adding and Mr. Roswell Adding; the young man who came in +last was Mr. L. J. Burnamy. March carried the list, with these names +carefully checked and rearranged on a neat plan of the table, to his wife +in her steamer chair, and left her to make out the history and the +character of the people from it. In this sort of conjecture long +experience had taught him his futility, and he strolled up and down and +looked at the life about him with no wish to penetrate it deeply. + +Long Island was now a low yellow line on the left. Some fishing-boats +flickered off the shore; they met a few sail, and left more behind; but +already, and so near one of the greatest ports of the world, the spacious +solitude of the ocean was beginning. There was no swell; the sea lay +quite flat, with a fine mesh of wrinkles on its surface, and the sun +flamed down upon it from a sky without a cloud. With the light fair +wind, there was no resistance in the sultry air, the thin, dun smoke from +the smoke-stack fell about the decks like a stifling veil. + +The promenades, were as uncomfortably crowded as the sidewalk of +Fourteenth Street on a summer's day, and showed much the social average +of a New York shopping thoroughfare. Distinction is something that does +not always reveal itself at first sight on land, and at sea it is still +more retrusive. A certain democracy of looks and clothes was the most +notable thing to March in the apathetic groups and detached figures. His +criticism disabled the saloon passengers of even so much personal appeal +as he imagined in some of the second-cabin passengers whom he saw across +their barrier; they had at least the pathos of their exclusion, and he +could wonder if they felt it or envied him. At Hoboken he had seen +certain people coming on board who looked like swells; but they had now +either retired from the crowd, or they had already conformed to the +prevailing type. It was very well as a type; he was of it himself; but +he wished that beauty as well as distinction had not been so lost in it. + +In fact, he no longer saw so much beauty anywhere as he once did. It +might be that he saw life more truly than when he was young, and that his +glasses were better than his eyes had been; but there were analogies that +forbade his thinking so, and he sometimes had his misgivings that the +trouble was with his glasses. He made what he could of a pretty girl who +had the air of not meaning to lose a moment from flirtation, and was +luring her fellow-passengers from under her sailor hat. She had already +attached one of them; and she was hooking out for more. She kept moving +herself from the waist up, as if she worked there on a pivot, showing now +this side and now that side of her face, and visiting the admirer she had +secured with a smile as from the lamp of a revolving light as she turned. + +While he was dwelling upon this folly, with a sense of impersonal +pleasure in it as complete through his years as if he were already a +disembodied spirit, the pulse of the engines suddenly ceased, and he +joined the general rush to the rail, with a fantastic expectation of +seeing another distracted mother put off; but it was only the pilot +leaving the ship. He was climbing down the ladder which hung over the +boat, rising and sinking on the sea below, while the two men in her held +her from the ship's side with their oars; in the offing lay the white +steam-yacht which now replaces the picturesque pilot-sloop of other +times. The Norumbia's screws turned again under half a head of steam; +the pilot dropped from the last rung of the ladder into the boat, and +caught the bundle of letters tossed after him. Then his men let go the +line that was towing their craft, and the incident of the steamer's +departure was finally closed. It had been dramatically heightened +perhaps by her final impatience to be off at some added risks to the +pilot and his men, but not painfully so, and March smiled to think how +men whose lives are all of dangerous chances seem always to take as many +of them as they can. + +He heard a girl's fresh voice saying at his shoulder, "Well, now we are +off; and I suppose you're glad, papa!" + +"I'm glad we're not taking the pilot on, at least," answered the elderly +man whom the girl had spoken to; and March turned to see the father and +daughter whose reticence at the breakfast table had interested him. He +wondered that he had left her out of the account in estimating the beauty +of the ship's passengers: he saw now that she was not only extremely +pretty, but as she moved away she was very graceful; she even had +distinction. He had fancied a tone of tolerance, and at the same time of +reproach in her voice, when she spoke, and a tone of defiance and not +very successful denial in her father's; and he went back with these +impressions to his wife, whom he thought he ought to tell why the ship +had stopped. + +She had not noticed the ship's stopping, in her study of the passenger +list, and she did not care for the pilot's leaving; but she seemed to +think his having overheard those words of the father and daughter an +event of prime importance. With a woman's willingness to adapt the means +to the end she suggested that he should follow them up and try to +overhear something more; she only partially realized the infamy of her +suggestion when he laughed in scornful refusal. + +"Of course I don't want you to eavesdrop, but I do want you to find out +about them. And about Mr. Burnamy, too. I can wait, about the others, +or manage for myself, but these are driving me to distraction. Now, will +you?" + +He said he would do anything he could with honor, and at one of the +earliest turns he made on the other side of the ship he was smilingly +halted by Mr. Burnamy, who asked to be excused, and then asked if he were +not Mr. March of 'Every Other Week'; he had seen the name on the +passenger list, and felt sure it must be the editor's. He seemed so +trustfully to expect March to remember his own name as that of a writer +from whom he had accepted a short poem, yet unprinted, that the editor +feigned to do so until he really did dimly recall it. He even recalled +the short poem, and some civil words he said about it caused Burnamy to +overrun in confidences that at once touched and amused him. + + + + +IX. + +Burnamy, it seemed, had taken passage on the Norumbia because he found, +when he arrived in New York the day before, that she was the first boat +out. His train was so much behind time that when he reached the office +of the Hanseatic League it was nominally shut, but he pushed in by +sufferance of the janitor, and found a berth, which had just been given +up, in one of the saloon-deck rooms. It was that or nothing; and he felt +rich enough to pay for it himself if the Bird of Prey, who had cabled him +to come out to Carlsbad as his secretary, would not stand the difference +between the price and that of the lower-deck six-in-a-room berth which he +would have taken if he had been allowed a choice. + +With the three hundred dollars he had got for his book, less the price of +his passage, changed into German bank-notes and gold pieces, and safely +buttoned in the breast pocket of his waistcoat, he felt as safe from +pillage as from poverty when he came out from buying his ticket; he +covertly pressed his arm against his breast from time to time, for the +joy of feeling his money there and not from any fear of finding it gone. +He wanted to sing, he wanted to dance; he could not believe it was he, +as he rode up the lonely length of Broadway in the cable-car, between the +wild, irregular walls of the canyon which the cable-cars have all to +themselves at the end of a summer afternoon. + +He went and dined, and he thought he dined well, at a Spanish-American +restaurant, for fifty cents, with a half-bottle of California claret +included. When he came back to Broadway he was aware that it was +stiflingly hot in the pinkish twilight, but he took a cable-car again in +lack of other pastime, and the motion served the purpose of a breeze, +which he made the most of by keeping his hat off. It did not really +matter to him whether it was hot or cool; he was imparadised in weather +which had nothing to do with the temperature. Partly because he was born +to such weather, in the gayety of soul which amused some people with him, +and partly because the world was behaving as he had always expected, he +was opulently content with the present moment. But he thought very +tolerantly of the future, and he confirmed himself in the decision he had +already made, to stick to Chicago when he came back to America. New York +was very well, and he had no sentiment about Chicago; but he had got a +foothold there; he had done better with an Eastern publisher, he +believed, by hailing from the West, and he did not believe it would hurt +him with the Eastern public to keep on hailing from the West. + +He was glad of a chance to see Europe, but he did not mean to come home +so dazzled as to see nothing else against the American sky. He fancied, +for he really knew nothing, that it was the light of Europe, not its +glare that he wanted, and he wanted it chiefly on his material, so as to +see it more and more objectively. It was his power of detachment from +this that had enabled him to do his sketches in the paper with such charm +as to lure a cash proposition from a publisher when he put them together +for a book, but he believed that his business faculty had much to do with +his success; and he was as proud of that as of the book itself. Perhaps +he was not so very proud of the book; he was at least not vain of it; he +could, detach himself from his art as well as his material. + +Like all literary temperaments he was of a certain hardness, in spite of +the susceptibilities that could be used to give coloring to his work. +He knew this well enough, but he believed that there were depths of +unprofessional tenderness in his nature. He was good to his mother, and +he sent her money, and wrote to her in the little Indiana town where he +had left her when he came to Chicago. After he got that invitation from +the Bird of Prey, he explored his heart for some affection that he had +not felt for him before, and he found a wish that his employer should not +know it was he who had invented that nickname for him. He promptly +avowed this in the newspaper office which formed one of the eyries of the +Bird of Prey, and made the fellows promise not to give him away. He +failed to move their imagination when he brought up as a reason for +softening toward him that he was from Burnamy's own part of Indiana, and +was a benefactor of Tippecanoe University, from which Burnamy was +graduated. But they, relished the cynicism of his attempt; and they were +glad of his good luck, which he was getting square and not rhomboid, as +most people seem to get their luck. They liked him, and some of them +liked him for his clean young life as well as for his cleverness. His +life was known to be as clean as a girl's, and he looked like a girl with +his sweet eyes, though he had rather more chin than most girls. + +The conductor came to reverse his seat, and Burnamy told him he guessed +he would ride back with him as far as the cars to the Hoboken Ferry, if +the conductor would put him off at the right place. It was nearly nine +o'clock, and he thought he might as well be going over to the ship, where +he had decided to pass the night. After he found her, and went on board, +he was glad he had not gone sooner. A queasy odor of drainage stole up +from the waters of the dock, and mixed with the rank, gross sweetness of +the bags of beet-root sugar from the freight-steamers; there was a coming +and going of carts and trucks on the wharf, and on the ship a rattling of +chains and a clucking of pulleys, with sudden outbreaks and then sudden +silences of trampling sea-boots. Burnamy looked into the dining-saloon +and the music-room, with the notion of trying for some naps there; then +he went to his state-room. His room-mate, whoever he was to be, had not +come; and he kicked off his shoes and threw off his coat and tumbled into +his berth. + +He meant to rest awhile, and then get up and spend the night in receiving +impressions. He could not think of any one who had done the facts of the +eve of sailing on an Atlantic liner. He thought he would use the +material first in a letter to the paper and afterwards in a poem; but he +found himself unable to grasp the notion of its essential relation to the +choice between chicken croquettes and sweetbreads as entrees of the +restaurant dinner where he had been offered neither; he knew that he had +begun to dream, and that he must get up. He was just going to get up, +when he woke to a sense of freshness in the air, penetrating from the new +day outside. He looked at his watch and found it was quarter past six; +he glanced round the state-room and saw that he had passed the night +alone in it. Then he splashed himself hastily at the basin next his +berth, and jumped into his clothes, and went on deck, anxious to lose no +feature or emotion of the ship's departure. + +When she was fairly off he returned to his room to change the thick coat +he had put on at the instigation of the early morning air. His room-mate +was still absent, but he was now represented by his state-room baggage, +and Burnamy tried to infer him from it. He perceived a social quality in +his dress-coat case, capacious gladstone, hat-box, rug, umbrella, and +sole-leather steamer trunk which he could not attribute to his own +equipment. The things were not so new as his; they had an effect of +polite experience, with a foreign registry and customs label on them here +and there. They had been chosen with both taste and knowledge, and +Burnamy would have said that they were certainly English things, if it +had not been for the initials U. S. A. which followed the name of E. B. +Triscoe on the end of the steamer trunk showing itself under the foot of +the lower berth. + +The lower berth had fallen to Burnamy through the default of the +passenger whose ticket he had got at the last hour; the clerk in the +steamer office had been careful to impress him with this advantage, and +he now imagined a trespass on his property. But he reassured himself by +a glance at his ticket, and went out to watch the ship's passage down the +stream and through the Narrows. After breakfast he came to his room +again, to see what could be done from his valise to make him look better +in the eyes of a girl whom he had seen across the table; of course he +professed a much more general purpose. He blamed himself for not having +got at least a pair of the white tennis-shoes which so many of the +passengers were wearing; his russet shoes had turned shabby on his feet; +but there was a, pair of enamelled leather boots in his bag which he +thought might do. + +His room was in the group of cabins on the upper deck; he had already +missed his way to it once by mistaking the corridor which it opened into; +and he was not sure that he was not blundering again when he peered down +the narrow passage where he supposed it was. A lady was standing at an +open state-room door, resting her hands against the jambs and leaning +forward with her head within and talking to some one there. Before he +could draw back and try another corridor he heard her say: "Perhaps he's +some young man, and wouldn't care." + +Burnamy could not make out the answer that came from within. The lady +spoke again in a tone of reluctant assent, "No, I don't suppose you +could; but if he understood, perhaps he would offer." + +She drew her head out of the room, stepping back a pace, and lingering a +moment at the threshold. She looked round over her shoulder and +discovered Burnamy, where he stood hesitating at the head of the passage. +She ebbed before him, and then flowed round him in her instant escape; +with some murmured incoherencies about speaking to her father, she +vanished in a corridor on the other side of the ship, while he stood +staring into the doorway of his room. + +He had seen that she was the young lady for whom he had come to put on +his enamelled shoes, and he saw that the person within was the elderly +gentleman who had sat next her at breakfast. He begged his pardon, as he +entered, and said he hoped he should not disturb him. "I'm afraid I left +my things all over the place, when I got up this morning." + +The other entreated him not to mention it and went on taking from his +hand-bag a variety of toilet appliances which the sight of made Burnamy +vow to keep his own simple combs and brushes shut in his valise all the +way over. "You slept on board, then," he suggested, arresting himself +with a pair of low shoes in his hand; he decided to put them in a certain +pocket of his steamer bag. + +"Oh, yes," Burnamy laughed, nervously: "I came near oversleeping, and +getting off to sea without knowing it; and I rushed out to save myself, +and so--" + +He began to gather up his belongings while he followed the movements of +Mr. Triscoe with a wistful eye. He would have liked to offer his lower +berth to this senior of his, when he saw him arranging to take possession +of the upper; but he did not quite know how to manage it. He noticed +that as the other moved about he limped slightly, unless it were rather a +weary easing of his person from one limb to the other. He stooped to +pull his trunk out from under the berth, and Burnamy sprang to help him. + +"Let me get that out for you!" He caught it up and put it on the sofa +under the port. "Is that where you want it?" + +"Why, yes," the other assented. "You're very good," and as he took out +his key to unlock the trunk he relented a little farther to the +intimacies of the situation. "Have you arranged with the bath-steward +yet? It's such a full boat." + +"No, I haven't," said Burnamy, as if he had tried and failed; till then +he had not known that there was a bath-steward. "Shall I get him for +you?" + +"No; no. Our bedroom-steward will send him, I dare say, thank you." + +Mr. Triscoe had got his trunk open, and Burnamy had no longer an excuse +for lingering. In his defeat concerning the bath-steward, as he felt it +to be, he had not the courage, now, to offer the lower berth. He went +away, forgetting to change his shoes; but he came back, and as soon as he +got the enamelled shoes on, and shut the shabby russet pair in his bag, +he said, abruptly: "Mr. Triscoe, I wish you'd take the lower berth. I +got it at the eleventh hour by some fellow's giving it up, and it isn't +as if I'd bargained for it a month ago." + +The elder man gave him one of his staccato glances in which Burnamy +fancied suspicion and even resentment. But he said, after the moment of +reflection which he gave himself, "Why, thank you, if you don't mind, +really." + +"Not at all!" cried the young man. "I should like the upper berth +better. We'll, have the steward change the sheets." + +"Oh, I'll see that he does that," said Mr. Triscoe. "I couldn't allow +you to take any trouble about it." He now looked as if he wished Burnamy +would go, and leave him to his domestic arrangements. + + + + +X. + +In telling about himself Burnamy touched only upon the points which he +believed would take his listener's intelligent fancy, and he stopped so +long before he had tired him that March said he would like to introduce +him to his wife. He saw in the agreeable young fellow an image of his +own youth, with some differences which, he was willing to own, were to +the young fellow's advantage. But they were both from the middle West; +in their native accent and their local tradition they were the same; they +were the same in their aspirations; they were of one blood in their +literary impulse to externate their thoughts and emotions. + +Burnamy answered, with a glance at his enamelled shoes, that he would be +delighted, and when her husband brought him up to her, Mrs. March said +she was always glad to meet the contributors to the magazine, and asked +him whether he knew Mr. Kendricks, who was her favorite. Without giving +him time to reply to a question that seemed to depress him, she said that +she had a son who must be nearly his own age, and whom his father had +left in charge of 'Every Other Week' for the few months they were to be +gone; that they had a daughter married and living in Chicago. She made +him sit down by her in March's chair, and before he left them March heard +him magnanimously asking whether Mr. Kendricks was going to do something +more for the magazine soon. He sauntered away and did not know how +quickly Burnamy left this question to say, with the laugh and blush which +became him in her eyes: + +"Mrs. March, there is something I should like to tell you about, if you +will let me." + +"Why, certainly, Mr. Burnamy," she began, but she saw that he did not +wish her to continue. + +"Because," he went on, "it's a little matter that I shouldn't like to go +wrong in." + +He told her of his having overheard what Miss Triscoe had said to her +father, and his belief that she was talking about the lower berth. He +said he would have wished to offer it, of course, but now he was afraid +they might think he had overheard them and felt obliged to do it. + +"I see," said Mrs. March, and she added, thoughtfully, "She looks like +rather a proud girl." + +"Yes," the young fellow sighed. + +"She is very charming," she continued, thoughtfully, but not so +judicially. + +"Well," Burnamy owned, "that is certainly one of the complications," and +they laughed together. + +She stopped herself after saying, "I see what you mean," and suggested, +"I think I should be guided by circumstances. It needn't be done at +once, I suppose." + +"Well," Burnamy began, and then he broke out, with a laugh of +embarrassment, "I've done it already." + +"Oh! Then it wasn't my advice, exactly, that you wanted." + +"No!" + +"And how did he take it?" + +"He said he should be glad to make the exchange if I really didn't mind." +Burnamy had risen restlessly, and she did not ask him to stay. She +merely said: + +"Oh, well, I'm glad it turned out so nicely." + +"I'm so glad you think it was the thing to do." He managed to laugh +again, but he could not hide from her that he was not feeling altogether +satisfied. "Would you like me to send Mr. March, if I see him?" he +asked, as if he did not know on what other terms to get away. + +"Do, please!" she entreated, and it seemed to her that he had hardly left +her when her husband came up. "Why, where in the world did he find you +so soon?" + +"Did you send him for me? I was just hanging round for him to go." March +sank into the chair at her side. "Well, is he going to marry her?" + +"Oh, you may laugh! But there is something very exciting!" She told him +what had happened, and of her belief that Burnamy's handsome behavior had +somehow not been met in kind. + +March gave himself the pleasure of an immense laugh. "It seems to me +that this Mr. Burnamy of yours wanted a little more gratitude than he was +entitled to. Why shouldn't he have offered him the lower berth? And why +shouldn't the old gentleman have taken it just as he did? Did you want +him to make a counteroffer of his daughter's hand? If he does, I hope +Mr. Burnamy won't come for your advice till after he's accepted her." + +"He wasn't very candid. I hoped you would speak about that. Don't you +think it was rather natural, though?" + +"For him, very likely. But I think you would call it sinuous in some one +you hadn't taken a fancy to." + +"No, no. I wish to be just. I don't see how he could have come straight +at it. And he did own up at last." She asked him what Burnamy had done +for the magazine, and he could remember nothing but that one small poem, +yet unprinted; he was rather vague about its value, but said it had +temperament. + +"He has temperament, too," she commented, and she had made him tell her +everything he knew, or could be forced to imagine about Burnamy, before +she let the talk turn to other things. + +The life of the promenade had already settled into seafaring form; the +steamer chairs were full, and people were reading or dozing in them with +an effect of long habit. Those who would be walking up and down had +begun their walks; some had begun going in and out of the smoking-room; +ladies who were easily affected by the motion were lying down in the +music-room. Groups of both sexes were standing at intervals along the +rail, and the promenaders were obliged to double on a briefer course or +work slowly round them. Shuffleboard parties at one point and ring-toss +parties at another were forming among the young people. It was as lively +and it was as dull as it would be two thousand miles at sea. It was not +the least cooler, yet; but if you sat still you did not suffer. + +In the prompt monotony the time was already passing swiftly. The deck- +steward seemed hardly to have been round with tea and bouillon, and he +had not yet gathered up all the empty cups, when the horn for lunch +sounded. It was the youngest of the table-stewards who gave the summons +to meals; and whenever the pretty boy appeared with his bugle, funny +passengers gathered round him to make him laugh, and stop him from +winding it. His part of the joke was to fulfill his duty with gravity, +and only to give way to a smile of triumph as he walked off. + + + + +XI. + +At lunch, in the faded excitement of their first meeting, the people at +the Marches' table did not renew the premature intimacy of their +breakfast talk. Mrs. March went to lie down in her berth afterwards, and +March went on deck without her. He began to walk to and from the barrier +between the first and second cabin promenades; lingering near it, and +musing pensively, for some of the people beyond it looked as intelligent +and as socially acceptable, even to their clothes, as their pecuniary +betters of the saloon. + +There were two women, a mother and daughter, whom he fancied to be +teachers, by their looks, going out for a little rest, or perhaps for a +little further study to fit them more perfectly for their work. They +gazed wistfully across at him whenever he came up to the barrier; and he +feigned a conversation with them and tried to convince them that the +stamp of inferiority which their poverty put upon them was just, or if +not just, then inevitable. He argued with them that the sort of barrier +which here prevented their being friends with him, if they wished it, ran +invisibly through society everywhere but he felt ashamed before their +kind, patient, intelligent faces, and found himself wishing to excuse the +fact he was defending. Was it any worse, he asked them, than their not +being invited to the entertainments of people in upper Fifth Avenue? He +made them own that if they were let across that barrier the whole second +cabin would have a logical right to follow; and they were silenced. But +they continued to gape at him with their sincere, gentle eyes whenever he +returned to the barrier in his walk, till he could bear it no longer, and +strolled off toward the steerage. + +There was more reason why the passengers there should be penned into a +little space of their own in the sort of pit made by the narrowing deck +at the bow. They seemed to be all foreigners, and if any had made their +fortunes in our country they were hiding their prosperity in the return +to their own. They could hardly have come to us more shabby and squalid +than they were going away; but he thought their average less apathetic +than that of the saloon passengers, as he leaned over the rail and looked +down at them. Some one had brought out an electric battery, and the +lumpish boys and slattern girls were shouting and laughing as they +writhed with the current. A young mother seated flat on the deck, with +her bare feet stuck out, inattentively nursed her babe, while she laughed +and shouted with the rest; a man with his head tied in a shawl walked +about the pen and smiled grotesquely with the well side of his toothache- +swollen face. The owner of the battery carried it away, and a group of +little children, with blue eyes and yellow hair, gathered in the space he +had left, and looked up at a passenger near March who was eating some +plums and cherries which he had brought from the luncheon table. He +began to throw the fruit down to them, and the children scrambled for it. + +An elderly man, with a thin, grave, aquiline face, said, "I shouldn't +want a child of mine down there." + +"No," March responded, "it isn't quite what one would choose for one's +own. It's astonishing, though, how we reconcile ourselves to it in the +case of others." + +"I suppose it's something we'll have to get used to on the other side," +suggested the stranger. + +"Well," answered March, "you have some opportunities to get used to it on +this side, if you happen to live in New York," and he went on to speak of +the raggedness which often penetrated the frontier of comfort where he +lived in Stuyvesant Square, and which seemed as glad of alms in food or +money as this poverty of the steerage. + +The other listened restively like a man whose ideals are disturbed. +"I don't believe I should like to live in New York, much," he said, and +March fancied that he wished to be asked where he did live. It appeared +that he lived in Ohio, and he named his town; he did not brag of it, but +he said it suited him. He added that he had never expected to go to +Europe, but that he had begun to run down lately, and his doctor thought +he had better go out and try Carlsbad. + +March said, to invite his further confidence, that this was exactly his +own case. The Ohio man met the overture from a common invalidism as if +it detracted from his own distinction; and he turned to speak of the +difficulty, he had in arranging his affairs for leaving home. His heart +opened a little with the word, and he said how comfortable he and his +wife were in their house, and how much they both hated to shut it up. +When March offered him his card, he said he had none of his own with him, +but that his name was Eltwin. He betrayed a simple wish to have March +realize the local importance he had left behind him; and it was not hard +to comply; March saw a Grand Army button in the lapel of his coat, and he +knew that he was in the presence of a veteran. + +He tried to guess his rank; in telling his wife about him, when he went +down to find her just before dinner, but he ended with a certain sense of +affliction. "There are too many elderly invalids on this ship. I knock +against people of my own age everywhere. Why aren't your youthful lovers +more in evidence, my dear? I don't believe they are lovers, and I begin +to doubt if they're young even." + +"It wasn't very satisfactory at lunch, certainly," she owned. "But I +know it will be different at dinner." She was putting herself together +after a nap that had made up for the lost sleep of the night before. +"I want you to look very nice, dear. Shall you dress for dinner?" she +asked her husband's image in the state-room glass which she was +preoccupying. + +"I shall dress in my pea-jacket and sea-boots," it answered. + +"I have heard that they always dress for dinner on the big Cunard and +White Star boats, when it's good weather," she went on, placidly. +"I shouldn't want those people to think you were not up in the +convenances." + +They both knew that she meant the reticent father and daughter, and March +flung out, "I shouldn't want them to think you weren't. There's such a +thing as overdoing." + +She attacked him at another point. "What has annoyed you? What else +have you been doing?" + +"Nothing. I've been reading most of the afternoon." + +"The Maiden Knight?" + +This was the book which nearly everybody had brought on board. It was +just out, and had caught an instant favor, which swelled later to a tidal +wave. It depicted a heroic girl in every trying circumstance of +mediaeval life, and gratified the perennial passion of both sexes for +historical romance, while it flattered woman's instinct of superiority by +the celebration of her unintermitted triumphs, ending in a preposterous +and wholly superfluous self-sacrifice. + +March laughed for pleasure in her guess, and she pursued, "I suppose you +didn't waste time looking if anybody had brought the last copy of 'Every +Other Week'?" + +"Yes, I did; and I found the one you had left in your steamer chair--for +advertising purposes, probably." + +"Mr. Burnamy has another," she said. "I saw it sticking out of his +pocket this morning." + +"Oh, yes. He told me he had got it on the train from Chicago to see if +it had his poem in it. He's an ingenuous soul--in some ways." + +"Well, that is the very reason why you ought to find out whether the men +are going to dress, and let him know. He would never think of it +himself." + +"Neither would I," said her husband. + +"Very well, if you wish to spoil his chance at the outset," she sighed. + +She did not quite know whether to be glad or not that the men were all in +sacks and cutaways at dinner; it saved her, from shame for her husband +and Mr. Burnamy; but it put her in the wrong. Every one talked; even the +father and daughter talked with each other, and at one moment Mrs. March +could not be quite sure that the daughter had not looked at her when she +spoke. She could not be mistaken in the remark which the father +addressed to Burnamy, though it led to nothing. + + + + +XII. + +The dinner was uncommonly good, as the first dinner out is apt to be; and +it went gayly on from soup to fruit, which was of the American abundance +and variety, and as yet not of the veteran freshness imparted by the ice- +closet. Everybody was eating it, when by a common consciousness they +were aware of alien witnesses. They looked up as by a single impulse, +and saw at the port the gaunt face of a steerage passenger staring down +upon their luxury; he held on his arm a child that shared his regard with +yet hungrier eyes. A boy's nose showed itself as if tiptoed to the +height of the man's elbow; a young girl peered over his other arm. + +The passengers glanced at one another; the two table-stewards, with their +napkins in their hands, smiled vaguely, and made some indefinite +movements. + +The bachelor at the head of the table broke the spell. "I'm glad it +didn't begin with the Little Neck clams!" + +"Probably they only let those people come for the dessert," March +suggested. + +The widow now followed the direction of the other eyes; and looked up +over her shoulder; she gave a little cry, and shrank down. The young +bride made her petted mouth, in appeal to the company; her husband looked +severe, as if he were going to do something, but refrained, not to make a +scene. The reticent father threw one of his staccato glances at the +port, and Mrs. March was sure that she saw the daughter steal a look at +Burnamy. + +The young fellow laughed. "I don't suppose there's anything to be done +about it, unless we pass out a plate." + +Mr. Kenby shook his head. "It wouldn't do. We might send for the +captain. Or the chief steward." + +The faces at the port vanished. At other ports profiles passed and +repassed, as if the steerage passengers had their promenade under them, +but they paused no more. + +The Marches went up to their steamer chairs, and from her exasperated +nerves Mrs. March denounced the arrangement of the ship which had made +such a cruel thing possible. + +"Oh," he mocked, "they had probably had a good substantial meal of their +own, and the scene of our banquet was of the quality of a picture, a +purely aesthetic treat. But supposing it wasn't, we're doing something +like it every day and every moment of our lives. The Norumbia is a piece +of the whole world's civilization set afloat, and passing from shore to +shore with unchanged classes, and conditions. A ship's merely a small +stage, where we're brought to close quarters with the daily drama of +humanity." + +"Well, then," she protested, "I don't like being brought to close +quarters with the daily drama of humanity, as you call it. And I don't +believe that the large English ships are built so that the steerage +passengers can stare in at the saloon windows while one is eating; and +I'm sorry we came on the Norumbia." + +"Ah, you think the Norumbia doesn't hide anything," he began, and he was +going to speak of the men in the furnace pits of the steamer, how they +fed the fires in a welding heat, and as if they had perished in it crept +out on the forecastle like blanched phantasms of toil; but she interposed +in time. + +"If there's anything worse, for pity's sake don't tell me," she +entreated, and he forebore. + +He sat thinking how once the world had not seemed to have even death in +it, and then how as he had grown older death had come into it more and +more, and suffering was lurking everywhere, and could hardly be kept out +of sight. He wondered if that young Burnamy now saw the world as he used +to see it, a place for making verse and making love, and full of beauty +of all kinds waiting to be fitted with phrases. He had lived a happy +life; Burnamy would be lucky if he should live one half as happy; and yet +if he could show him his whole happy life, just as it had truly been, +must not the young man shrink from such a picture of his future? + +"Say something," said his wife. "What are you thinking about?" + +"Oh, Burnamy," he answered, honestly enough. + +"I was thinking about the children," she said. "I am glad Bella didn't +try to come from Chicago to see us off; it would have been too silly; she +is getting to be very sensible. I hope Tom won't take the covers off the +furniture when he has the fellows in to see him." + +"Well, I want him to get all the comfort he can out of the place, even if +the moths eat up every stick of furniture." + +"Yes, so do I. And of course you're wishing that you were there with +him!" March laughed guiltily. "Well, perhaps it was a crazy thing for +us to start off alone for Europe, at our age." + +"Nothing of the kind," he retorted in the necessity he perceived for +staying her drooping spirits. "I wouldn't be anywhere else on any +account. Isn't it perfectly delicious? It puts me in mind of that night +on the Lake Ontario boat, when we were starting for Montreal. There was +the same sort of red sunset, and the air wasn't a bit softer than this." + +He spoke of a night on their wedding-journey when they were sill new +enough from Europe to be comparing everything at home with things there. + +"Well, perhaps we shall get into the spirit of it again," she said, and +they talked a long time of the past. + +All the mechanical noises were muffled in the dull air, and the wash of +the ship's course through the waveless sea made itself pleasantly heard. +In the offing a steamer homeward bound swam smoothly by, so close that +her lights outlined her to the eye; she sent up some signal rockets that +soared against the purple heaven in green and crimson, and spoke to the +Norumbia in the mysterious mute phrases of ships that meet in the dark. + +Mrs. March wondered what had become of Burnamy; the promenades were much +freer now than they had been since the ship sailed; when she rose to go +below, she caught sight of Burnamy walking the deck transversely with +some lady. She clutched her husband's arm and stayed him in rich +conjecture. + +"Do you suppose he can have got her to walking with him already?" + +They waited till Burnamy and his companion came in sight again. She was +tilting forward, and turning from the waist, now to him and now from him. + +"No; it's that pivotal girl," said March; and his wife said, "Well, I'm +glad he won't be put down by them." + +In the music-room sat the people she meant, and at the instant she passed +on down the stairs, the daughter was saying to the father, "I don't see +why you didn't tell me sooner, papa." + +"It was such an unimportant matter that I didn't think to mention it. +He offered it, and I took it; that was all. What difference could it +have made to you?" + +"None. But one doesn't like to do any one an injustice." + +"I didn't know you were thinking anything about it." + +"No, of course not." + + + + +XIII. + +The voyage of the Norumbia was one of those which passengers say they +have never seen anything like, though for the first two or three days out +neither the doctor nor the deck-steward could be got, to prophesy when +the ship would be in. There was only a day or two when it could really +be called rough, and the sea-sickness was confined to those who seemed +wilful sufferers; they lay on the cushioned benching around the stairs- +landing, and subsisted on biscuit and beef tea without qualifying the +monotonous well-being of the other passengers, who passed without +noticing them. + +The second morning there was rain, and the air freshened, but the leaden +sea lay level as before. The sun shone in the afternoon; with the sunset +the fog came thick and white; the ship lowed dismally through the night; +from the dense folds of the mist answering noises called back to her. +Just before dark two men in a dory shouted up to her close under her +bows, and then melted out of sight; when the dark fell the lights of +fishing-schooners were seen, and their bells pealed; once loud cries from +a vessel near at hand made themselves heard. Some people in the dining- +saloon sang hymns; the smoking-room was dense with cigar fumes, and the +card-players dealt their hands in an atmosphere emulous of the fog +without. + +The Norumbia was off the Banks, and the second day of fog was cold as if +icebergs were haunting the opaque pallor around her. In the ranks of +steamer chairs people lay like mummies in their dense wrappings; in the +music-room the little children of travel discussed the different lines of +steamers on which they had crossed, and babes of five and seven disputed +about the motion on the Cunarders and White Stars; their nurses tried in +vain to still them in behalf of older passengers trying to write letters +there. + +By the next morning the ship had run out of the fog; and people who could +keep their feet said they were glad of the greater motion which they +found beyond the Banks. They now talked of the heat of the first days +out, and how much they had suffered; some who had passed the night on +board before sailing tried to impart a sense of their misery in trying to +sleep. + +A day or two later a storm struck the ship, and the sailors stretched +canvas along the weather promenade and put up a sheathing of boards +across the bow end to keep off the rain. Yet a day or two more and the +sea had fallen again and there was dancing on the widest space of the lee +promenade. + +The little events of the sea outside the steamer offered themselves in +their poor variety. Once a ship in the offing, with all its square sails +set, lifted them like three white towers from the deep. On the rim of +the ocean the length of some westward liner blocked itself out against +the horizon, and swiftly trailed its smoke out of sight. A few tramp +steamers, lounging and lunging through the trough of the sea, were +overtaken and left behind; an old brigantine passed so close that her +rusty iron sides showed plain, and one could discern the faces of the +people on board. + +The steamer was oftenest without the sign of any life beyond her. One +day a small bird beat the air with its little wings, under the roof of +the promenade, and then flittered from sight over the surface, of the +waste; a school of porpoises, stiff and wooden in their rise, plunged +clumsily from wave to wave. The deep itself had sometimes the unreality, +the artificiality of the canvas sea of the theatre. Commonly it was +livid and cold in color; but there was a morning when it was delicately +misted, and where the mist left it clear, it was blue and exquisitely +iridescent under the pale sun; the wrinkled waves were finely pitted by +the falling spray. These were rare moments; mostly, when it was not like +painted canvas, is was hard like black rock, with surfaces of smooth +cleavage. Where it met the sky it lay flat and motionless, or in the +rougher weather carved itself along the horizon in successions of surges. + +If the sun rose clear, it was overcast in a few hours; then the clouds +broke and let a little sunshine through, to close again before the dim +evening thickened over the waters. Sometimes the moon looked through the +ragged curtain of vapors; one night it seemed to shine till morning, and +shook a path of quicksilver from the horizon to the ship. Through every +change, after she had left the fog behind, the steamer drove on with the +pulse of her engines (that stopped no more than a man's heart stops) in a +course which had nothing to mark it but the spread of the furrows from +her sides, and the wake that foamed from her stern to the western verge +of the sea. + +The life of the ship, like the life of the sea, was a sodden monotony, +with certain events which were part of the monotony. In the morning the +little steward's bugle called the passengers from their dreams, and half +an hour later called them to their breakfast, after such as chose had +been served with coffee by their bedroom-stewards. Then they went on +deck, where they read, or dozed in their chairs, or walked up and down, +or stood in the way of those who were walking; or played shuffleboard and +ring-toss; or smoked, and drank whiskey and aerated waters over their +cards and papers in the smoking-room; or wrote letters in the saloon or +the music-room. At eleven o'clock they spoiled their appetites for lunch +with tea or bouillon to the music of a band of second-cabin stewards; at +one, a single blast of the bugle called them to lunch, where they glutted +themselves to the torpor from which they afterwards drowsed in their +berths or chairs. They did the same things in the afternoon that they +had done in the forenoon; and at four o'clock the deck-stewards came +round with their cups and saucers, and their plates of sandwiches, again +to the music of the band. There were two bugle-calls for dinner, and +after dinner some went early to bed, and some sat up late and had grills +and toast. At twelve the lights were put out in the saloons and the +smoking-rooms. + +There were various smells which stored themselves up in the consciousness +to remain lastingly relative to certain moments and places: a whiff of +whiskey and tobacco that exhaled from the door of the smoking-room; the +odor of oil and steam rising from the open skylights over the engine- +room; the scent of stale bread about the doors of the dining-saloon. + +The life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, only more monotonous. +The walking was limited; the talk was the tentative talk of people aware +that there was no refuge if they got tired of one another. The flirting +itself, such as there was of it, must be carried on in the glare of the +pervasive publicity; it must be crude and bold, or not be at all. + +There seemed to be very little of it. There were not many young people +on board of saloon quality, and these were mostly girls. The young men +were mainly of the smoking-room sort; they seldom risked themselves among +the steamer chairs. It was gayer in the second cabin, and gayer yet in +the steerage, where robuster emotions were operated by the accordion. +The passengers there danced to its music; they sang to it and laughed to +it unabashed under the eyes of the first-cabin witnesses clustered along +the rail above the pit where they took their rude pleasures. + +With March it came to his spending many hours of each long, swift day in +his berth with a book under the convenient electric light. He was safe +there from the acquaintances which constantly formed themselves only to +fall into disintegration, and cling to him afterwards as inorganic +particles of weather-guessing, and smoking-room gossip about the ship's +run. + +In the earliest hours of the voyage he thought that he saw some faces of +the great world, the world of wealth and fashion; but these afterward +vanished, and left him to wonder where they hid themselves. He did not +meet them even in going to and from his meals; he could only imagine them +served in those palatial state-rooms whose interiors the stewards now and +then rather obtruded upon the public. There were people whom he +encountered in the promenades when he got up for the sunrise, and whom he +never saw at other times; at midnight he met men prowling in the dark +whom he never met by day. But none of these were people of the great +world. Before six o'clock they were sometimes second-cabin passengers, +whose barrier was then lifted for a little while to give them the freedom +of the saloon promenade. + +From time to time he thought he would look up his Ohioan, and revive from +a closer study of him his interest in the rare American who had never +been to Europe. But he kept with his elderly wife, who had the effect of +withholding him from March's advances. Young Mr. and Mrs. Leffers threw +off more and more their disguise of a long-married pair, and became +frankly bride and groom. They seldom talked with any one else, except at +table; they walked up and down together, smiling into each others faces; +they sat side by side in their steamer chairs; one shawl covered them +both, and there was reason to believe that they were holding each other's +hands under it. + +Mrs. Adding often took the chair beside Mrs. March when her husband was +straying about the ship or reading in his berth; and the two ladies must +have exchanged autobiographies, for Mrs. March was able to tell him just +how long Mrs. Adding had been a widow, what her husband died of, and what +had been done to save him; how she was now perfectly wrapt up in her boy, +and was taking him abroad, with some notion of going to Switzerland, +after the summer's travel, and settling down with him at school there. +She and Mrs. March became great friends; and Rose, as his mother called +him, attached himself reverently to March, not only as a celebrity of the +first grade in his quality of editor of 'Every Other Week', but as a sage +of wisdom and goodness, with whom he must not lose the chance of counsel +upon almost every hypothesis and exigency of life. + +March could not bring himself to place Burnamy quite where he belonged in +contemporary literature, when Rose put him very high in virtue of the +poem which he heard Burnamy was going to have printed in 'Every Other +Week', and of the book which he was going to have published; and he let +the boy bring to the young fellow the flattery which can come to any +author but once, in the first request for his autograph that Burnamy +confessed to have had. They were so near in age, though they were ten +years apart, that Rose stood much more in awe of Burnamy than of others +much more his seniors. He was often in the company of Kenby, whom he +valued next to March as a person acquainted with men; he consulted March +upon Kenby's practice of always taking up the language of the country he +visited, if it were only for a fortnight; and he conceived a higher +opinion of him from March's approval. + +Burnamy was most with Mrs. March, who made him talk about himself when he +supposed he was talking about literature, in the hope that she could get +him to talk about the Triscoes; but she listened in vain as he poured +out-his soul in theories of literary art, and in histories of what he had +written and what he meant to write. When he passed them where they sat +together, March heard the young fellow's perpetually recurring I, I, I, +my, my, my, me, me, me; and smiled to think how she was suffering under +the drip-drip of his innocent egotism. + +She bore in a sort of scientific patience his attentions to the pivotal +girl, and Miss Triscoe's indifference to him, in which a less penetrating +scrutiny could have detected no change from meal to meal. It was only at +table that she could see them together, or that she could note any break +in the reserve of the father and daughter. The signs of this were so +fine that when she reported them March laughed in scornful incredulity. +But at breakfast the third day out, the Triscoes, with the authority of +people accustomed to social consideration, suddenly turned to the +Marches, and began to make themselves agreeable; the father spoke to +March of 'Every Other Week', which he seemed to know of in its relation +to him; and the young girl addressed herself to Mrs. March's motherly +sense not the less acceptably because indirectly. She spoke of going out +with her father for an indefinite time, as if it were rather his wish +than hers, and she made some inquiries about places in Germany; they had +never been in Germany. They had some idea of Dresden; but the idea of +Dresden with its American colony seemed rather tiresome; and did Mrs. +March know anything about Weimar? + +Mrs. March was obliged to say that she knew nothing about anyplace in +Germany; and she explained perhaps too fully where and why she was going +with her husband. She fancied a Boston note in that scorn for the +tiresomeness of Dresden; but the girl's style was of New York rather than +of Boston, and her accent was not quite of either place. Mrs. March +began to try the Triscoes in this place and in that, to divine them and +to class them. She had decided from the first that they were society +people, but they were cultivated beyond the average of the few swells +whom she had met; and there had been nothing offensive in their manner of +holding themselves aloof from the other people at the table; they had a +right to do that if they chose. + +When the young Lefferses came in to breakfast, the talk went on between +these and the Marches; the Triscoes presently left the table, and Mrs. +March rose soon after, eager for that discussion of their behavior which +March knew he should not be able to postpone. + +He agreed with her that they were society people, but she could not at +once accept his theory that they had themselves been the objects of an +advance from them because of their neutral literary quality, through +which they were of no social world, but potentially common to any. Later +she admitted this, as she said, for the sake of argument, though what she +wanted him to see, now, was that this was all a step of the girl's toward +finding out something about Burnamy. + +The same afternoon, about the time the deck-steward was making his round +with his cups, Miss Triscoe abruptly advanced upon her from a neighboring +corner of the bulkhead, and asked, with the air of one accustomed to have +her advances gratefully received, if she might sit by her. The girl took +March's vacant chair, where she had her cup of bouillon, which she +continued to hold untasted in her hand after the first sip. Mrs. March +did the same with hers, and at the moment she had got very tired of doing +it, Burnamy came by, for the hundredth time that day, and gave her a +hundredth bow with a hundredth smile. He perceived that she wished to +get rid of her cup, and he sprang to her relief. + +"May I take yours too?" he said very passively to Miss Triscoe. + +"You are very good." she answered, and gave it. + +Mrs. March with a casual air suggested, "Do you know Mr. Burnamy, Miss +Triscoe? "The girl said a few civil things, but Burnamy did not try to +make talk with her while he remained a few moments before Mrs. March. +The pivotal girl came in sight, tilting and turning in a rare moment of +isolation at the corner of the music-room, and he bowed abruptly, and +hurried off to join her. + +Miss Triscoe did not linger; she alleged the necessity of looking up her +father, and went away with a smile so friendly that Mrs. March might +easily have construed it to mean that no blame attached itself to her in +Miss Triscoe's mind. + +"Then you don't feel that it was a very distinct success?" her husband +asked on his return. + +"Not on the surface," she said. + +"Better let ill enough alone," he advised. + +She did not heed him. "All the same she cares for him. The very fact +that she was so cold shows that." + +"And do you think her being cold will make him care for her?" + +"If she wants it to." + + + + +XIV. + +At dinner that day the question of 'The Maiden Knight' was debated among +the noises and silences of the band. Young Mrs. Leffers had brought the +book to the table with her; she said she had not been able to lay it down +before the last horn sounded; in fact she could have been seen reading it +to her husband where he sat under the same shawl, the whole afternoon. + +"Don't you think it's perfectly fascinating," she asked Mrs. Adding, with +her petted mouth. + +"Well," said the widow, doubtfully, "it's nearly a week since I read it, +and I've had time to get over the glow." + +"Oh, I could just read it forever!" the bride exclaimed. + +"I like a book," said her husband, "that takes me out of myself. I don't +want to think when I'm reading." + +March was going to attack this ideal, but he reflected in time that Mr. +Leffers had really stated his own motive in reading. He compromised. +"Well, I like the author to do my thinking for me." + +"Yes," said the other, "that is what I mean." + +"The question is whether 'The Maiden Knight' fellow does it," said Kenby, +taking duck and pease from the steward at his shoulder. + +"What my wife likes in it is to see what one woman can do and be single- +handed," said March. + +"No," his wife corrected him, "what a man thinks she can." + +"I suppose," said Mr. Triscoe, unexpectedly, "that we're like the English +in our habit of going off about a book like a train of powder." + +"If you'll say a row of bricks," March assented, "I'll agree with you. +It's certainly Anglo-Saxon to fall over one another as we do, when we get +going. It would be interesting to know just how much liking there is in +the popularity of a given book." + +"It's like the run of a song, isn't it?" Kenby suggested. "You can't +stand either, when it reaches a given point." + +He spoke to March and ignored Triscoe, who had hitherto ignored the rest +of the table. + +"It's very curious," March said. "The book or the song catches a mood, +or feeds a craving, and when one passes or the other is glutted--" + +"The discouraging part is," Triscoe put in, still limiting himself to the +Marches, "that it's never a question of real taste. The things that go +down with us are so crude, so coarsely spiced; they tickle such a vulgar +palate--Now in France, for instance," he suggested. + +"Well, I don't know," returned the editor. "After all, we eat a good +deal of bread, and we drink more pure water than any other people. Even +when we drink it iced, I fancy it isn't so bad as absinthe." + +The young bride looked at him gratefully, but she said, "If we can't get +ice-water in Europe, I don't know what Mr. Leffers will do," and the talk +threatened to pass among the ladies into a comparison of American and +European customs. + +Burnamy could not bear to let it. "I don't pretend to be very well up in +French literature," he began, "but I think such a book as 'The Maiden +Knight' isn't such a bad piece of work; people are liking a pretty well- +built story when they like it. Of course it's sentimental, and it begs +the question a good deal; but it imagines something heroic in character, +and it makes the reader imagine it too. The man who wrote that book may +be a donkey half the time, but he's a genius the other half. By-and-by +he'll do something--after he's come to see that his 'Maiden Knight' was a +fool--that I believe even you won't be down on, Mr. March, if he paints a +heroic type as powerfully as he does in this book." + +He spoke with the authority of a journalist, and though he deferred to +March in the end, he deferred with authority still. March liked him for +coming to the defence of a young writer whom he had not himself learned +to like yet. "Yes," he said, "if he has the power you say, and can keep +it after he comes to his artistic consciousness!" + +Mrs. Leffers, as if she thought things were going her way, smiled; Rose +Adding listened with shining eyes expectantly fixed on March; his mother +viewed his rapture with tender amusement. The steward was at Kenby's +shoulder with the salad and his entreating "Bleace!" and Triscoe seemed +to be questioning whether he should take any notice of Burnamy's general +disagreement. He said at last: "I'm afraid we haven't the documents. +You don't seem to have cared much for French books, and I haven't read +'The Maiden Knight'." He added to March: "But I don't defend absinthe. +Ice-water is better. What I object to is our indiscriminate taste both +for raw whiskey--and for milk-and-water." + +No one took up the question again, and it was Kenby who spoke next. +"The doctor thinks, if this weather holds, that we shall be into Plymouth +Wednesday morning. I always like to get a professional opinion on the +ship's run." + +In the evening, as Mrs. March was putting away in her portfolio the +journal-letter which she was writing to send back from Plymouth to her +children, Miss Triscoe drifted to the place where she sat at their table +in the dining-room by a coincidence which they both respected as casual. + +"We had quite a literary dinner," she remarked, hovering for a moment +near the chair which she later sank into. "It must have made you feel +very much at home. Or perhaps you're so tired of it at home that you +don't talk about books." + +"We always talk shop, in some form or other," said Mrs. March. +"My husband never tires of it. A good many of the contributors come to +us, you know." + +"It must be delightful," said the girl. She added as if she ought to +excuse herself for neglecting an advantage that might have been hers if +she had chosen, "I'm sorry one sees so little of the artistic and +literary set. But New York is such a big place." + +New York people seem to be very fond of it," said Mrs. March. "Those who +have always lived there." + +"We haven't always lived there," said the girl. "But I think one has a +good time there--the best time a girl can have. It's all very well +coming over for the summer; one has to spend the summer somewhere. Are +you going out for a long time?" + +"Only for the summer. First to Carlsbad." + +"Oh, yes. I suppose we shall travel about through Germany, and then go +to Paris. We always do; my father is very fond of it." + +"You must know it very well," said Mrs. March, aimlessly. + +"I was born there,--if that means knowing it. I lived there--till I was +eleven years old. We came home after my mother died." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. March. + +The girl did not go further into her family history; but by one of those +leaps which seem to women as logical as other progressions, she arrived +at asking, "Is Mr. Burnamy one of the contributors?" + +Mrs. March laughed. "He is going to be, as soon as his poem is printed." + +"Poem?" + +"Yes. Mr. March thinks it's very good." + +"I thought he spoke very nicely about 'The Maiden Knight'. And he has +been very nice to papa. You know they have the same room." + +"I think Mr. Burnamy told me," Mrs. March said. + +The girl went on. "He had the lower berth, and he gave it up to papa; +he's done everything but turn himself out of doors." + +"I'm sure he's been very glad," Mrs. March ventured on Burnamy's behalf, +but very softly, lest if she breathed upon these budding confidences they +should shrink and wither away. + +"I always tell papa that there's no country like America for real +unselfishness; and if they're all like that, in Chicago!" The girl +stopped, and added with a laugh, "But I'm always quarrelling with papa +about America." + +"We have a daughter living in Chicago," said Mrs. March, alluringly. + +But Miss Triscoe refused the bait, either because she had said all she +meant, or because she had said all she would, about Chicago, which Mrs. +March felt for the present to be one with Burnamy. She gave another of +her leaps. "I don't see why people are so anxious to get it like Europe, +at home. They say that there was a time when there were no chaperons +before hoops, you know." She looked suggestively at Mrs. March, resting +one slim hand on the table, and controlling her skirt with the other, as +if she were getting ready to rise at any moment. "When they used to sit +on their steps." + +"It was very pleasant before hoops--in every way," said Mrs. March. +"I was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always +simpler than in New York. I used to sit on our steps. It was delightful +for girls--the freedom." + +"I wish I had lived before hoops," said Miss Triscoe. + +"Well, there must be places where it's before hoops yet: Seattle, and +Portland, Oregon, for all I know," Mrs. March suggested. "And there must +be people in that epoch everywhere." + +"Like that young lady who twists and turns?" said Miss Triscoe, giving +first one side of her face and then the other. "They have a good time. +I suppose if Europe came to us in one way it had to come in another. If +it came in galleries and all that sort of thing, it had to come in +chaperons. You'll think I'm a great extremist, Mrs. March; but sometimes +I wish there was more America instead of less. I don't believe it's as +bad as people say. Does Mr. March," she asked, taking hold of the chair +with one hand, to secure her footing from any caprice of the sea, while +she gathered her skirt more firmly into the other, as she rose, "does he +think that America is going--all wrong?" + +"All wrong? How?" + +"Oh, in politics, don't you know. And government, and all that. And +bribing. And the lower classes having everything their own way. And the +horrid newspapers. And everything getting so expensive; and no regard +for family, or anything of that kind." + +Mrs. March thought she saw what Miss Triscoe meant, but she answered, +still cautiously, "I don't believe he does always. Though there are +times when he is very much disgusted. Then he says that he is getting +too old--and we always quarrel about that--to see things as they really +are. He says that if the world had been going the way that people over +fifty have always thought it was going, it would have gone to smash in +the time of the anthropoidal apes." + +"Oh, yes: Darwin," said Miss Triscoe, vaguely. "Well, I'm glad he +doesn't give it up. I didn't know but I was holding out just because I +had argued so much, and was doing it out of--opposition. Goodnight!" +She called her salutation gayly over her shoulder, and Mrs. March watched +her gliding out of the saloon with a graceful tilt to humor the slight +roll of the ship, and a little lurch to correct it, once or twice, and +wondered if Burnamy was afraid of her; it seemed to her that if she were +a young man she should not be afraid of Miss Triscoe. + +The next morning, just after she had arranged herself in her steamer +chair, he approached her, bowing and smiling, with the first of his many +bows and smiles for the day, and at the same time Miss Triscoe came +toward her from the opposite direction. She nodded brightly to him, and +he gave her a bow and smile too; he always had so many of them to spare. + +"Here is your chair!" Mrs. March called to her, drawing the shawl out of +the chair next her own. "Mr. March is wandering about the ship +somewhere." + +"I'll keep it for him," said Miss Triscoe, and as Burnamy offered to take +the shawl that hung in the hollow of her arm, she let it slip into his +hand with an "Oh; thank you," which seemed also a permission for him to +wrap it about her in the chair. + +He stood talking before the ladies, but he looked up and down the +promenade. The pivotal girl showed herself at the corner of the music- +room, as she had done the day before. At first she revolved there as if +she were shedding her light on some one hidden round the corner; then she +moved a few paces farther out and showed herself more obviously alone. +Clearly she was there for Burnamy to come and walk with her; Mrs. March +could see that, and she felt that Miss Triscoe saw it too. She waited +for her to dismiss him to his flirtation; but Miss Triscoe kept chatting +on, and he kept answering, and making no motion to get away. Mrs. March +began to be as sorry for her as she was ashamed for him. Then she heard +him saying, "Would you like a turn or two?" and Miss Triscoe answering, +"Why, yes, thank you," and promptly getting out of her chair as if the +pains they had both been at to get her settled in it were all nothing. + +She had the composure to say, "You can leave your shawl with me, Miss +Triscoe," and to receive her fervent, "Oh, thank you," before they sailed +off together, with inhuman indifference to the girl at the corner of the +music-room. Then she sank into a kind of triumphal collapse, from which +she roused herself to point her husband to the chair beside her when he +happened along. + +He chose to be perverse about her romance. "Well, now, you had better +let them alone. Remember Kendricks." He meant one of their young +friends whose love-affair they had promoted till his happy marriage left +them in lasting doubt of what they had done. "My sympathies are all with +the pivotal girl. Hadn't she as much right to him, for the time being, +or for good and all, as Miss Triscoe?" + +"That depends upon what you think of Burnamy." + +"Well, I don't like to see a girl have a young man snatched away from her +just when she's made sure of him. How do you suppose she is feeling +now?" + +"She isn't feeling at all. She's letting her revolving light fall upon +half a dozen other young men by this time, collectively or consecutively. +All that she wants to make sure of is that they're young men--or old +ones, even." + +March laughed, but not altogether at what his wife said. "I've been +having a little talk with Papa Triscoe, in the smoking-room." + +"You smell like it," said his wife, not to seem too eager: "Well?" + +"Well, Papa Triscoe seems to be in a pout. He doesn't think things are +going as they should in America. He hasn't been consulted, or if he has, +his opinion hasn't been acted upon." + +"I think he's horrid," said Mrs. March. "Who are they?" + +"I couldn't make out, and I couldn't ask. But I'll tell you what I +think." + +"What?" + +"That there's no chance for, Burnamy. He's taking his daughter out to +marry her to a crowned head." + + + + +XV. + +It was this afternoon that the dance took place on the south promenade. +Everybody came and looked, and the circle around the waltzers was three +or four deep. Between the surrounding heads and shoulders, the hats of +the young ladies wheeling and whirling, and the faces of the men who were +wheeling and whirling them, rose and sank with the rhythm of their steps. +The space allotted to the dancing was walled to seaward with canvas, and +was prettily treated with German, and American flags: it was hard to go +wrong with flags, Miss Triscoe said, securing herself under Mrs. March's +wing. + +Where they stood they could see Burnamy's face, flashing and flushing in +the dance; at the end of the first piece he came to them, and remained +talking and laughing till the music began again. + +"Don't you want to try it?" he asked abruptly of Miss Triscoe. + +"Isn't it rather--public?" she asked back. + +Mrs. March could feel the hand which the girl had put through her arm +thrill with temptation; but Burnamy could not. + +"Perhaps it is rather obvious," he said, and he made a long glide over +the deck to the feet of the pivotal girl, anticipating another young man +who was rapidly advancing from the opposite quarter. The next moment her +hat and his face showed themselves in the necessary proximity to each +other within the circle. + +"How well she dances!" said Miss Triscoe. + +"Do you think so? She looks as if she had been wound up and set going." + +"She's very graceful," the girl persisted. + +The day ended with an entertainment in the saloon for one of the marine +charities which address themselves to the hearts and pockets of +passengers on all steamers. There were recitations in English and +German, and songs from several people who had kindly consented, and ever +more piano performance. Most of those who took part were of the race +gifted in art and finance; its children excelled in the music, and its +fathers counted the gate-money during the last half of the programme, +with an audible clinking of the silver on the table before them. + +Miss Triscoe was with her father, and Mrs. March was herself chaperoned +by Mr. Burnamy: her husband had refused to come to the entertainment. +She hoped to leave Burnamy and Miss Triscoe together before the evening +ended; but Miss Triscoe merely stopped with her father, in quitting the +saloon, to laugh at some features of the entertainment, as people who +take no part in such things do; Burnamy stood up to exchange some +unimpassioned words with her, and then they said good-night. + +The next morning, at five o'clock, the Norumbia came to anchor in the +pretty harbor of Plymouth. In the cool early light the town lay distinct +along the shore, quaint with its small English houses, and stately with +come public edifices of unknown function on the uplands; a country-seat +of aristocratic aspect showed itself on one of the heights; on another +the tower of a country church peered over the tree-tops; there were lines +of fortifications, as peaceful, at their distance, as the stone walls +dividing the green fields. The very iron-clads in the harbor close at +hand contributed to the amiable gayety of the scene under the pale blue +English sky, already broken with clouds from which the flush of the +sunrise had not quite faded. The breath of the land came freshly out +over the water; one could almost smell the grass and the leaves. Gulls +wheeled and darted over the crisp water; the tones of the English voices +on the tender were pleasant to the ear, as it fussed and scuffled to the +ship's side. A few score of the passengers left her; with their baggage +they formed picturesque groups on the tender's deck, and they set out for +the shore waving their hands and their handkerchiefs to the friends they +left clustering along the rail of the Norumbia. Mr. and Mrs. Leffers +bade March farewell, in the final fondness inspired by his having coffee +with them before they left the ship; they said they hated to leave. + +The stop had roused everybody, and the breakfast tables were promptly +filled, except such as the passengers landing at Plymouth had vacated; +these were stripped of their cloths, and the remaining commensals placed +at others. The seats of the Lefferses were given to March's old Ohio +friend and his wife. He tried to engage them in the tally which began to +be general in the excitement of having touched land; but they shyly held +aloof. + +Some English newspapers had come aboard from the tug, and there was the +usual good-natured adjustment of the American self-satisfaction, among +those who had seen them, to the ever-surprising fact that our continent +is apparently of no interest to Europe. There were some meagre New York +stock-market quotations in the papers; a paragraph in fine print +announced the lynching of a negro in Alabama; another recorded a coal- +mining strike in Pennsylvania. + +"I always have to get used to it over again," said Kenby. "This is the +twentieth time I have been across, and I'm just as much astonished as I +was the first, to find out that they don't want to know anything about us +here." + +"Oh," said March, "curiosity and the weather both come from the west. +San Francisco wants to know about Denver, Denver about Chicago, Chicago +about New York, and New York about London; but curiosity never travels +the other way any more than a hot wave or a cold wave." + +"Ah, but London doesn't care a rap about Vienna," said Kenby. + +"Well, some pressures give out before they reach the coast, on our own +side. It isn't an infallible analogy." + +Triscoe was fiercely chewing a morsel, as if in haste to take part in the +discussion. He gulped it, and broke out. "Why should they care about +us, anyway?" + +March lightly ventured, "Oh, men and brothers, you know." + +"That isn't sufficient ground. The Chinese are men and brothers; so are +the South-Americans and Central-Africans, and Hawaiians; but we're not +impatient for the latest news about them. It's civilization that +interests civilization." + +"I hope that fact doesn't leave us out in the cold with the barbarians?" +Burnamy put in, with a smile. + +"Do you think we are civilized?" retorted the other. + +"We have that superstition in Chicago," said Burnamy. He added, still +smiling, "About the New-Yorkers, I mean." + +"You're more superstitious in Chicago than I supposed. New York is an +anarchy, tempered by vigilance committees." + +"Oh, I don't think you can say that," Kenby cheerfully protested, "since +the Reformers came in. Look at our streets!" + +"Yes, our streets are clean, for the time being, and when we look at them +we think we have made a clean sweep in our manners and morals. But how +long do you think it will be before Tammany will be in the saddle again?" + +"Oh, never in the world!" said the optimistic head of the table. + +"I wish I had your faith; or I should if I didn't feel that it is one of +the things that help to establish Tammanys with us. You will see our +Tammany in power after the next election." Kenby laughed in a large- +hearted incredulity; and his laugh was like fuel to the other's flame. +"New York is politically a mediaeval Italian republic, and it's morally a +frontier mining-town. Socially it's--" He stopped as if he could not say +what. + +"I think it's a place where you have a very nice time, papa," said his +daughter, and Burnamy smiled with her; not because he knew anything about +it. + +Her father went on as if he had not heard her. "It's as vulgar and crude +as money can make it. Nothing counts but money, and as soon as there's +enough, it counts for everything. In less than a year you'll have +Tammany in power; it won't be more than a year till you'll have it in +society." + +"Oh no! Oh no!" came from Kenby. He did not care much for society, but +he vaguely respected it as the stronghold of the proprieties and the +amenities. + +"Isn't society a good place for Tammany to be in?" asked March in the +pause Triscoe let follow upon Kenby's laugh. + +"There's no reason why it shouldn't be. Society is as bad as all the +rest of it. And what New York is, politically, morally, and socially, +the whole country wishes to be and tries to be." + +There was that measure of truth in the words which silences; no one could +find just the terms of refutation. + +"Well," said Kenby at last, "it's a good thing there are so many lines to +Europe. We've still got the right to emigrate." + +"Yes, but even there we don't escape the abuse of our infamous newspapers +for exercising a man's right to live where he chooses. And there is no +country in Europe--except Turkey, or Spain--that isn't a better home for +an honest man than the United States." + +The Ohioan had once before cleared his throat as if he were going to +speak. Now, he leaned far enough forward to catch Triscoe's eve, and +said, slowly and distinctly: "I don't know just what reason you have to +feel as you do about the country. I feel differently about it myself-- +perhaps because I fought for it." + +At first, the others were glad of this arrogance; it even seemed an +answer; but Burnamy saw Miss Triscoe's cheek, flush, and then he doubted +its validity. + +Triscoe nervously crushed a biscuit in his hand, as if to expend a +violent impulse upon it. He said, coldly, "I was speaking from that +stand-point." + +The Ohioan shrank back in his seat, and March felt sorry for him, though +he had put himself in the wrong. His old hand trembled beside his plate, +and his head shook, while his lips formed silent words; and his shy wife +was sharing his pain and shame. + +Kenby began to talk about the stop which the Norumbia was to make at +Cherbourg, and about what hour the next day they should all be in +Cuxhaven. Miss Triscoe said they had never come on the Hanseatic Line +before, and asked several questions. Her father did not speak again, and +after a little while he rose without waiting for her to make the move +from table; he had punctiliously deferred to her hitherto. Eltwin rose +at the same time, and March feared that he might be going to provoke +another defeat, in some way. + +Eltwin lifted his voice, and said, trying to catch Triscoe's eye, "I +think I ought to beg your pardon, sir. I do beg your pardon." + +March perceived that Eltwin wished to make the offer of his reparation as +distinct as his aggression had been; and now he quaked for Triscoe, whose +daughter he saw glance apprehensively at her father as she swayed aside +to let the two men come together. + +"That is all right, Colonel--" + +"Major," Eltwin conscientiously interposed. + +"Major," Triscoe bowed; and he put out his hand and grasped the hand +which had been tremulously rising toward him. "There can't be any doubt +of what we did, no matter what we've got." + +"No, no!" said the other, eagerly. "That was what I meant, sir. I +don't think as you do; but I believe that a man who helped to save the +country has a right to think what he pleases about it." + +Triscoe said, "That is all right, my dear sir. May I ask your regiment?" + +The Marches let the old fellows walk away together, followed by the wife +of the one and the daughter of the other. They saw the young girl making +some graceful overtures of speech to the elder woman as they went. + +"That was rather fine, my dear," said Mrs. March. + +"Well, I don't know. It was a little too dramatic, wasn't it? It wasn't +what I should have expected of real life." + +"Oh, you spoil everything! If that's the spirit you're going through +Europe in!" + +"It isn't. As soon as I touch European soil I shall reform." + + + + +XVI. + +That was not the first time General Triscoe had silenced question of his +opinions with the argument he had used upon Eltwin, though he was seldom +able to use it so aptly. He always found that people suffered, his +belief in our national degeneration much more readily when they knew that +he had left a diplomatic position in Europe (he had gone abroad as +secretary of a minor legation) to come home and fight for the Union. +Some millions of other men had gone into the war from the varied motives +which impelled men at that time; but he was aware that he had +distinction, as a man of property and a man of family, in doing so. His +family had improved as time passed, and it was now so old that back of +his grandfather it was lost in antiquity. This ancestor had retired from +the sea and become a merchant in his native Rhode Island port, where his +son established himself as a physician, and married the daughter of a +former slave-trader whose social position was the highest in the place; +Triscoe liked to mention his maternal grandfather when he wished a +listener to realize just how anomalous his part in a war against slavery +was; it heightened the effect of his pose. + +He fought gallantly through the war, and he was brevetted Brigadier- +General at the close. With this honor, and with the wound which caused +an almost imperceptible limp in his gait, he won the heart of a rich New +York girl, and her father set him up in a business, which was not long in +going to pieces in his hands. Then the young couple went to live in +Paris, where their daughter was born, and where the mother died when the +child was ten years old. A little later his father-in-law died, and +Triscoe returned to New York, where he found the fortune which his +daughter had inherited was much less than he somehow thought he had a +right to expect. + +The income from her fortune was enough to live on, and he did not go back +to Paris, where, in fact, things were not so much to his mind under the +Republic as they had been under the Second Empire. He was still willing +to do something for his country, however, and he allowed his name to be +used on a citizen's ticket in his district; but his provision-man was +sent to Congress instead. Then he retired to Rhode Island and attempted +to convert his shore property into a watering-place; but after being +attractively plotted and laid out with streets and sidewalks, it allured +no one to build on it except the birds and the chipmonks, and he came +back to New York, where his daughter had remained in school. + +One of her maternal aunts made her a coming-out tea, after she left +school; and she entered upon a series of dinners, dances, theatre +parties, and receptions of all kinds; but the tide of fairy gold pouring +through her fingers left no engagement-ring on them. She had no duties, +but she seldom got out of humor with her pleasures; she had some odd +tastes of her own, and in a society where none but the most serious books +were ever seriously mentioned she was rather fond of good ones, and had +romantic ideas of a life that she vaguely called bohemian. Her character +was never tested by anything more trying than the fear that her father +might take her abroad to live; he had taken her abroad several times for +the summer. + +The dreaded trial did not approach for several years after she had ceased +to be a bud; and then it came when her father was again willing to serve +his country in diplomacy, either at the Hague, or at Brussels, or even at +Berne. Reasons of political geography prevented his appointment +anywhere, but General Triscoe having arranged his affairs for going +abroad on the mission he had expected, decided to go without it. He was +really very fit for both of the offices he had sought, and so far as a +man can deserve public place by public service, he had deserved it. +His pessimism was uncommonly well grounded, and if it did not go very +deep, it might well have reached the bottom of his nature. + +His daughter had begun to divine him at the early age when parents +suppose themselves still to be mysteries to their children. She did not +think it necessary ever to explain him to others; perhaps she would not +have found it possible; and now after she parted from Mrs. Eltwin and +went to sit down beside Mrs. March she did not refer to her father. She +said how sweet she had found the old lady from Ohio; and what sort of +place did Mrs. March suppose it was where Mrs. Eltwin lived? They seemed +to have everything there, like any place. She had wanted to ask Mrs. +Eltwin if they sat on their steps; but she had not quite dared. + +Burnamy came by, slowly, and at Mrs. March's suggestion he took one of +the chairs on her other side, to help her and Miss Triscoe look at the +Channel Islands and watch the approach of the steamer to Cherbourg, where +the Norumbia was to land again. The young people talked across Mrs. +March to each other, and said how charming the islands were, in their +gray-green insubstantiality, with valleys furrowing them far inward, like +airy clefts in low banks of clouds. It seemed all the nicer not to know +just which was which; but when the ship drew nearer to Cherbourg, he +suggested that they could see better by going round to the other side of +the ship. Miss Triscoe, as at the other times when she had gone off with +Burnamy, marked her allegiance, to Mrs. March by leaving a wrap with her. + +Every one was restless in breaking with the old life at sea. There had +been an equal unrest when the ship first sailed; people had first come +aboard in the demoralization of severing their ties with home, and they +shrank from forming others. Then the charm of the idle, eventless life +grew upon them, and united them in a fond reluctance from the inevitable +end. + +Now that the beginning of the end had come, the pangs of disintegration +were felt in all the once-more-repellant particles. Burnamy and Miss +Triscoe, as they hung upon the rail, owned to each other that they hated +to have the voyage over. They had liked leaving Plymouth and being at +sea again; they wished that they need not be reminded of another +debarkation by the energy of the crane in hoisting the Cherbourg baggage +from the hold. + +They approved of the picturesqueness of three French vessels of war that +passed, dragging their kraken shapes low through the level water. At +Cherbourg an emotional French tender came out to the ship, very different +in her clamorous voices and excited figures from the steady self-control +of the English tender at Plymouth; and they thought the French +fortifications much more on show than the English had been. Nothing +marked their youthful date so much to the Marches, who presently joined +them, as their failure to realize that in this peaceful sea the great +battle between the Kearsarge and the Alabama was fought. The elder +couple tried to affect their imaginations with the fact which reanimated +the spectre of a dreadful war for themselves; but they had to pass on +and, leave the young people unmoved. + +Mrs. March wondered if they noticed the debarkation of the pivotal girl, +whom she saw standing on the deck of the tender, with her hands at her +waist, and giving now this side and now that side of her face to the +young men waving their hats to her from the rail of the ship. Burnamy +was not of their number, and he seemed not to know that the girl was +leaving him finally to Miss Triscoe. If Miss Triscoe knew it she did +nothing the whole of that long, last afternoon to profit by the fact. +Burnamy spent a great part of it in the chair beside Mrs. March, and he +showed an intolerable resignation to the girl's absence. + +"Yes," said March, taking the place Burnamy left at last, "that terrible +patience of youth!" + +"Patience? Folly! Stupidity! They ought to be together every instant! +Do they suppose that life is full of such chances? Do they think that +fate has nothing to do but--" + +She stopped for a fit climax, and he suggested, "Hang round and wait on +them?" + +"Yes! It's their one chance in a life-time, probably." + +"Then you've quite decided that they're in love?" He sank comfortably +back, and put up his weary legs on the chair's extension with the +conviction that love had no such joy as that to offer. + +"I've decided that they're intensely interested in each other." + +"Then what more can we ask of them? And why do you care what they do or +don't do with their chance? Why do you wish their love well, if it's +that? Is marriage such a very certain good?" + +"It isn't all that it might be, but it's all that there is. What would +our lives have been without it?" she retorted. + +"Oh, we should have got on. It's such a tremendous risk that we, ought +to go round begging people to think twice, to count a hundred, or a +nonillion, before they fall in love to the marrying-point. I don't mind +their flirting; that amuses them; but marrying is a different thing. +I doubt if Papa Triscoe would take kindly to the notion of a son-in-law +he hadn't selected himself, and his daughter doesn't strike me as a young +lady who has any wisdom to throw away on a choice. She has her little +charm; her little gift of beauty, of grace, of spirit, and the other +things that go with her age and sex; but what could she do for a fellow +like Burnamy, who has his way to make, who has the ladder of fame to +climb, with an old mother at the bottom of it to look after? You +wouldn't want him to have an eye on Miss Triscoe's money, even if she had +money, and I doubt if she has much. It's all very pretty to have a girl +like her fascinated with a youth of his simple traditions; though Burnamy +isn't altogether pastoral in his ideals, and he looks forward to a place +in the very world she belongs to. I don't think it's for us to promote +the affair." + +"Well, perhaps you're right," she sighed. "I will let them alone from +this out. Thank goodness, I shall not have them under my eyes very +long." + +"Oh, I don't think there's any harm done yet," said her husband, with a +laugh. + +At dinner there seemed so little harm of the kind he meant that she +suffered from an illogical disappointment. The young people got through +the meal with no talk that seemed inductive; Burnamy left the table +first, and Miss Triscoe bore his going without apparent discouragement; +she kept on chatting with March till his wife took him away to their +chairs on deck. + +There were a few more ships in sight than there were in mid-ocean; but +the late twilight thickened over the North Sea quite like the night after +they left New York, except that it was colder; and their hearts turned to +their children, who had been in abeyance for the week past, with a +remorseful pang. "Well, she said, "I wish we were going to be in New +York to-morrow, instead of Hamburg." + +"Oh, no! Oh, no!" he protested. "Not so bad as that, my dear. This is +the last night, and it's hard to manage, as the last night always is. I +suppose the last night on earth--" + +"Basil!" she implored. + +"Well, I won't, then. But what I want is to see a Dutch lugger. I've +never seen a Dutch lugger, and--" + +She suddenly pressed his arm, and in obedience to the signal he was +silent; though it seemed afterwards that he ought to have gone on talking +as if he did not see Burnamy and Miss Triscoe swinging slowly by. They +were walking close together, and she was leaning forward and looking up +into his face while he talked. + +"Now," Mrs. March whispered, long after they were out of hearing, "let us +go instantly. I wouldn't for worlds have them see us here when they get +found again. They would feel that they had to stop and speak, and that +would spoil everything. Come!" + + + + +XVII. + +Burnamy paused in a flow of autobiography, and modestly waited for Miss +Triscoe's prompting. He had not to wait long. + +"And then, how soon did you think of printing your things in a book?" + +"Oh, about as soon as they began to take with the public." + +"How could you tell that they were-taking?" + +"They were copied into other papers, and people talked about them." + +"And that was what made Mr. Stoller want you to be his secretary?" + +"I don't believe it was. The theory in the office was that he didn't +think much of them; but he knows I can write shorthand, and put things +into shape." + +"What things?" + +"Oh--ideas. He has a notion of trying to come forward in politics. He +owns shares in everything but the United States Senate--gas, electricity, +railroads, aldermen, newspapers--and now he would like some Senate. +That's what I think." + +She did not quite understand, and she was far from knowing that this +cynic humor expressed a deadlier pessimism than her father's fiercest +accusals of the country. "How fascinating it is!" she said, innocently. + +"And I suppose they all envy your coming out?" + +"In the office?" + +"Yes. I should envy, them--staying." + +Burnamy laughed. "I don't believe they envy me. It won't be all roses +for me--they know that. But they know that I can take care of myself if +it isn't." He remembered something one of his friends in the office had +said of the painful surprise the Bird of Prey would feel if he ever tried +his beak on him in the belief that he was soft. + +She abruptly left the mere personal question. "And which would you +rather write: poems or those kind of sketches?" + +"I don't know," said Burnamy, willing to talk of himself on any terms. +"I suppose that prose is the thing for our time, rather more; but there +are things you can't say in prose. I used to write a great deal of verse +in college; but I didn't have much luck with editors till Mr. March took +this little piece for 'Every Other Week'." + +"Little? I thought it was a long poem!" + +Burnamy laughed at the notion. "It's only eight lines." + +"Oh!" said the girl. "What is it about?" + +He yielded to the temptation with a weakness which he found incredible in +a person of his make. "I can repeat it if you won't give me away to Mrs. +March." + +"Oh, no indeed!" He said the lines over to her very simply and well." +They are beautiful--beautiful!" + +"Do you think so?" he gasped, in his joy at her praise. + +"Yes, lovely. Do you know, you are the first literary man--the only +literary man--I ever talked with. They must go out--somewhere! Papa +must meet them at his clubs. But I never do; and so I'm making the most +of you." + +"You can't make too much of me, Miss Triscoe," said Burnamy. + +She would not mind his mocking. "That day you spoke about 'The Maiden +Knight', don't you know, I had never heard any talk about books in that +way. I didn't know you were an author then." + +"Well, I'm not much of an author now," he said, cynically, to retrieve +his folly in repeating his poem to her. + +"Oh, that will do for you to say. But I know what Mrs. March thinks." + +He wished very much to know what Mrs. March thought, too; 'Every Other +Week' was such a very good place that he could not conscientiously +neglect any means of having his work favorably considered there; if Mrs. +March's interest in it would act upon her husband, ought not he to know +just how much she thought of him as a writer? "Did she like the poem." + +Miss Triscoe could not recall that Mrs. March had said anything about the +poem, but she launched herself upon the general current of Mrs. March's +liking for Burnamy. "But it wouldn't do to tell you all she said!" +This was not what he hoped, but be was richly content when she returned +to his personal history. "And you didn't know any one when, you went up +to Chicago from--" + +"Tippecanoe? Not exactly that. I wasn't acquainted with any one in the +office, but they had printed somethings of mine, and they were willing to +let me try my hand. That was all I could ask." + +"Of course! You knew you could do the rest. Well, it is like a romance. +A woman couldn't have such an adventure as that!" sighed the girl. + +"But women do!" Burnamy retorted. "There is a girl writing on the paper +now--she's going to do the literary notices while I'm gone--who came to +Chicago from Ann Arbor, with no more chance than I had, and who's made +her way single-handed from interviewing up." + +"Oh," said Miss Triscoe, with a distinct drop in her enthusiasm. +"Is she nice?" + +"She's mighty clever, and she's nice enough, too, though the kind of +journalism that women do isn't the most dignified. And she's one of the +best girls I know, with lots of sense." + +"It must be very interesting," said Miss Triscoe, with little interest in +the way she said it. "I suppose you're quite a little community by +yourselves." + +"On the paper?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, some of us know one another, in the office, but most of us don't. +There's quite a regiment of people on a big paper. If you'd like to come +out," Burnamy ventured, "perhaps you could get the Woman's Page to do." + +"What's that?" + +"Oh, fashion; and personal gossip about society leaders; and recipes for +dishes and diseases; and correspondence on points of etiquette." + +He expected her to shudder at the notion, but she merely asked, "Do women +write it?" + +He laughed reminiscently. "Well, not always. We had one man who used to +do it beautifully--when he was sober. The department hasn't had any +permanent head since." + +He was sorry he had said this, but it did not seem to shock her, and no +doubt she had not taken it in fully. She abruptly left the subject. +"Do you know what time we really get in to-morrow?" + +"About one, I believe--there's a consensus of stewards to that effect, +anyway." After a pause he asked, "Are you likely to be in Carlsbad?" + +"We are going to Dresden, first, I believe. Then we may go on down to +Vienna. But nothing is settled, yet." + +"Are you going direct to Dresden?" + +"I don't know. We may stay in Hamburg a day or two." + +"I've got to go straight to Carlsbad. There's a sleeping-car that will +get me there by morning: Mr. Stoller likes zeal. But I hope you'll let +me be of use to you any way I can, before we part tomorrow." + +"You're very kind. You've been very good already--to papa." +He protested that he had not been at all good. "But he's used to taking +care of himself on the other side. Oh, it's this side, now!" + +"So it is! How strange that seems! It's actually Europe. But as long +as we're at sea, we can't realize it. Don't you hate to have experiences +slip through your fingers?" + +"I don't know. A girl doesn't have many experiences of her own; they're +always other people's." + +This affected Burnamy as so profound that he did not question its truth. +He only suggested, "Well; sometimes they make other people have the +experiences." + +Whether Miss Triscoe decided that this was too intimate or not she left +the question. "Do you understand German?" + +"A little. I studied it at college, and I've cultivated a sort of beer- +garden German in Chicago. I can ask for things." + +"I can't, except in French, and that's worse than English, in Germany, +I hear." + +"Then you must let me be your interpreter up to the last moment. Will +you?" + +She did not answer. "It must be rather late, isn't it?" she asked. He +let her see his watch, and she said, "Yes, it's very late," and led the +way within. "I must look after my packing; papa's always so prompt, and +I must justify myself for making him let me give up my maid when we left +home; we expect to get one in Dresden. Good-night!" + +Burnamy looked after her drifting down their corridor, and wondered +whether it would have been a fit return for her expression of a sense of +novelty in him as a literary man if he had told her that she was the +first young lady he had known who had a maid. The fact awed him; Miss +Triscoe herself did not awe him so much. + + + + +XVIII. + +The next morning was merely a transitional period, full of turmoil and +disorder, between the broken life of the sea and the untried life of the +shore. No one attempted to resume the routine of the voyage. People +went and came between their rooms and the saloons and the decks, and were +no longer careful to take their own steamer chairs when they sat down for +a moment. + +In the cabins the berths were not made up, and those who remained below +had to sit on their hard edges, or on the sofas, which were cumbered +with, hand-bags and rolls of shawls. At an early hour after breakfast +the bedroom stewards began to get the steamer trunks out and pile them in +the corridors; the servants all became more caressingly attentive; and +people who had left off settling the amount of the fees they were going +to give, anxiously conferred together. The question whether you ought +ever to give the head steward anything pressed crucially at the early +lunch, and Kenby brought only a partial relief by saying that he always +regarded the head steward as an officer of the ship. March made the +experiment of offering him six marks, and the head steward took them +quite as if he were not an officer of the ship. He also collected a +handsome fee for the music, which is the tax levied on all German ships +beyond the tolls exacted on the steamers of other nations. + +After lunch the flat shore at Cuxhaven was so near that the summer +cottages of the little watering-place showed through the warm drizzle +much like the summer cottages of our own shore, and if it had not been +for the strange, low sky, the Americans might easily have fancied +themselves at home again. + +Every one waited on foot while the tender came out into the stream where +the Norumbia had dropped anchor. People who had brought their hand- +baggage with them from their rooms looked so much safer with it that +people who had left theirs to their stewards had to go back and pledge +them afresh not to forget it. The tender came alongside, and the +transfer of the heavy trunks began, but it seemed such an endless work +that every one sat down in some other's chair. At last the trunks were +all on the tender, and the bareheaded stewards began to run down the +gangways with the hand-baggage. "Is this Hoboken?" March murmured in his +wife's ear, with a bewildered sense of something in the scene like the +reversed action of the kinematograph. + +On the deck of the tender there was a brief moment of reunion among the +companions of the voyage, the more intimate for their being crowded +together under cover from the drizzle which now turned into a dashing +rain. Burnamy's smile appeared, and then Mrs. March recognized Miss +Triscoe and her father in their travel dress; they were not far from +Burnamy's smile, but he seemed rather to have charge of the Eltwins, whom +he was helping look after their bags and bundles. Rose Adding was +talking with Kenby, and apparently asking his opinion of something; Mrs. +Adding sat near them tranquilly enjoying her son. + +Mrs. March made her husband identify their baggage, large and small, and +after he had satisfied her, he furtively satisfied himself by a fresh +count that it was all there. But he need not have taken the trouble; +their long, calm bedroom-steward was keeping guard over it; his eyes +expressed a contemptuous pity for their anxiety, whose like he must have +been very tired of. He brought their handbags into the customs-room at +the station where they landed; and there took a last leave and a last fee +with unexpected cordiality. + +Again their companionship suffered eclipse in the distraction which the +customs inspectors of all countries bring to travellers; and again they +were united during the long delay in the waiting-room, which was also the +restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors--the +shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German +voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars. +Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a +letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay, +Krahnay! "When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and +shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed gratefully, and began to cry, +"Kren! Kren!" But whether Mr. Crane got his letter or not, he never +knew. + +People were swarming at the window of the telegraph-office, and sending +home cablegrams to announce their safe arrival; March could not forbear +cabling to his son, though he felt it absurd. There was a great deal of +talking, but no laughing, except among the Americans, and the girls +behind the bar who tried to understand, what they wanted, and then served +them with what they chose for them. Otherwise the Germans, though +voluble, were unsmiling, and here on the threshold of their empire the +travellers had their first hint of the anxious mood which seems habitual +with these amiable people. + +Mrs. Adding came screaming with glee to March where he sat with his wife, +and leaned over her son to ask, "Do you know what lese-majesty is? Rose +is afraid I've committed it!" + +"No, I don't," said March. "But it's the unpardonable sin. What have +you been doing?" + +"I asked the official at the door when our train would start, and when he +said at half past three, I said, 'How tiresome!' Rose says the railroads +belong to the state here, and that if I find fault with the time-table, +it's constructive censure of the Emperor, and that's lese-majesty." She +gave way to her mirth, while the boy studied March's face with an +appealing smile. + +"Well, I don't think you'll be arrested this time, Mrs. Adding; but I +hope it will be a warning to Mrs. March. She's been complaining of the +coffee." + +"Indeed I shall say what I like," said Mrs. March. "I'm an American." + +"Well, you'll find you're a German, if you like to say anything +disagreeable about the coffee in the restaurant of the Emperor's railroad +station; the first thing you know I shall be given three months on your +account." + +Mrs. Adding asked: "Then they won't punish ladies? There, Rose! I'm +safe, you see; and you're still a minor, though you are so wise for your +years." + +She went back to her table, where Kenby came and sat down by her. + +"I don't know that I quite like her playing on that sensitive child,", +said Mrs. March. "And you've joined with her in her joking. Go and +speak, to him!" + +The boy was slowly following his mother, with his head fallen. March +overtook him, and he started nervously at the touch of a hand on his +shoulder, and then looked gratefully up into the man's face. March tried +to tell him what the crime of lese-majesty was, and he said: "Oh, yes. +I understood that. But I got to thinking; and I don't want my mother to +take any risks." + +"I don't believe she will, really, Rose. But I'll speak to her, and tell +her she can't be too cautious." + +"Not now, please!" the boy entreated. + +"Well, I'll find another chance," March assented. He looked round and +caught a smiling nod from Burnamy, who was still with the Eltwins; the +Triscoes were at a table by themselves; Miss Triseoe nodded too, but her +father appeared not to see March. "It's all right, with Rose," he said, +when he sat down again by his wife; "but I guess it's all over with +Burnamy," and he told her what he had seen. "Do you think it came to any +displeasure between them last night? Do you suppose he offered himself, +and she--" + +"What nonsense!" said Mrs. March, but she was not at peace. "It's her +father who's keeping her away from him." + +"I shouldn't mind that. He's keeping her away from us, too." But at +that moment Miss Triscoe as if she had followed his return from afar, +came over to speak to his wife. She said they were going on to Dresden +that evening, and she was afraid they might have no chance to see each +other on the train or in Hamburg. March, at this advance, went to speak +with her father; he found him no more reconciled to Europe than America. + +"They're Goths," he said of the Germans. "I could hardly get that stupid +brute in the telegraph-office to take my despatch." + +On his way back to his wife March met Miss Triscoe; he was not altogether +surprised to meet Burnamy with her, now. The young fellow asked if he +could be of any use to him, and then he said he would look him up in the +train. He seemed in a hurry, but when he walked away with Miss Triscoe +he did not seem in a hurry. + +March remarked upon the change to his wife, and she sighed, "Yes, you can +see that as far as they're concerned." + +"It's a great pity that there should be parents to complicate these +affairs," he said. "How simple it would be if there were no parties to +them but the lovers! But nature is always insisting upon fathers and +mothers, and families on both sides." + + + + +XIX. + +The long train which they took at last was for the Norumbia's people +alone, and it was of several transitional and tentative types of cars. +Some were still the old coach-body carriages; but most were of a strange +corridor arrangement, with the aide at the aide, and the seats crossing +from it, with compartments sometimes rising to the roof, and sometimes +rising half-way. No two cars seemed quite alike, but all were very +comfortable; and when the train began to run out through the little sea- +side town into the country, the old delight of foreign travel began. +Most of the houses were little and low and gray, with ivy or flowering +vines covering their walls to their browntiled roofs; there was here and +there a touch of Northern Gothic in the architecture; but usually where +it was pretentious it was in the mansard taste, which was so bad with us +a generation ago, and is still very bad in Cuxhaven. + +The fields, flat and wide, were dotted with familiar shapes of Holstein +cattle, herded by little girls, with their hair in yellow pigtails. The +gray, stormy sky hung low, and broke in fitful rains; but perhaps for the +inclement season of mid-summer it was not very cold. Flowers were +blooming along the embankments and in the rank green fields with a dogged +energy; in the various distances were groups of trees embowering cottages +and even villages, and always along the ditches and watercourses were +double lines of low willows. At the first stop the train made, the +passengers flocked to the refreshment-booth, prettily arranged beside the +station, where the abundance of the cherries and strawberries gave proof +that vegetation was in other respects superior to the elements. But it +was not of the profusion of the sausages, and the ham which openly in +slices or covertly in sandwiches claimed its primacy in the German +affections; every form of this was flanked by tall glasses of beer. + +A number of the natives stood by and stared unsmiling at the train, which +had broken out in a rash of little American flags at every window. This +boyish display, which must have made the Americans themselves laugh, if +their sense of humor had not been lost in their impassioned patriotism, +was the last expression of unity among the Norumbia's passengers, and +they met no more in their sea-solidarity. Of their table acquaintance +the Marches saw no one except Burnamy, who came through the train looking +for them. He said he was in one of the rear cars with the Eltwins, and +was going to Carlsbad with them in the sleeping-car train leaving Hamburg +at seven. He owned to having seen the Triscoes since they had left +Cuxhaven; Mrs. March would not suffer herself to ask him whether they +were in the same carriage with the Eltwins. He had got a letter from +Mr. Stoller at Cuxhaven, and he begged the Marches to let him engage +rooms for them at the hotel where he was going to stay with him. + +After they reached Hamburg they had flying glimpses of him and of others +in the odious rivalry to get their baggage examined first which seized +upon all, and in which they no longer knew one another, but selfishly +struggled for the good-will of porters and inspectors. There was really +no such haste; but none could govern themselves against the general +frenzy. With the porter he secured March conspired and perspired to win +the attention of a cold but not unkindly inspector. The officer opened +one trunk, and after a glance at it marked all as passed, and then there +ensued a heroic strife with the porter as to the pieces which were to go +to the Berlin station for their journey next day, and the pieces which +were to go to the hotel overnight. At last the division was made; the +Marches got into a cab of the first class; and the porter, crimson and +steaming at every pore from the physical and intellectual strain, went +back into the station. + +They had got the number of their cab from the policeman who stands at the +door of all large German stations and supplies the traveller with a +metallic check for the sort of vehicle he demands. They were not proud, +but it seemed best not to risk a second-class cab in a strange city, and +when their first-class cab came creaking and limping out of the rank, +they saw how wise they had been, if one of the second class could have +been worse. + +As they rattled away from the station they saw yet another kind of +turnout, which they were destined to see more and more in the German +lands. It was that team of a woman harnessed with a dog to a cart which +the women of no other country can see without a sense of personal insult. +March tried to take the humorous view, and complained that they had not +been offered the choice of such an equipage by the policeman, but his +wife would not be amused. She said that no country which suffered such a +thing could be truly civilized, though he made her observe that no city +in the world, except Boston or Brooklyn, was probably so thoroughly +trolleyed as Hamburg. The hum of the electric car was everywhere, and +everywhere the shriek of the wires overhead; batlike flights of +connecting plates traversed all the perspectives through which they drove +to the pleasant little hotel they had chosen. + + + + +XX. + +On one hand their windows looked toward a basin of the Elbe, where +stately white swans were sailing; and on the other to the new Rathhaus, +over the trees that deeply shaded the perennial mud of a cold, dim public +garden, where water-proof old women and impervious nurses sat, and +children played in the long twilight of the sour, rain-soaked summer of +the fatherland. It was all picturesque, and within-doors there was the +novelty of the meagre carpets and stalwart furniture of the Germans, and +their beds, which after so many ages of Anglo-Saxon satire remain +immutably preposterous. They are apparently imagined for the stature of +sleepers who have shortened as they broadened; their pillows are +triangularly shaped to bring the chin tight upon the breast under the +bloated feather bulk which is meant for covering, and which rises over +the sleeper from a thick substratum of cotton coverlet, neatly buttoned +into the upper sheet, with the effect of a portly waistcoat. + +The hotel was illumined by the kindly splendor of the uniformed portier, +who had met the travellers at the door, like a glowing vision of the +past, and a friendly air diffused itself through the whole house. At the +dinner, which, if not so cheap as they had somehow hoped, was by no means +bad, they took counsel with the English-speaking waiter as to what +entertainment Hamburg could offer for the evening, and by the time they +had drunk their coffee they had courage for the Circus Renz, which seemed +to be all there was. + +The conductor of the trolley-car, which they hailed at the street corner, +stopped it and got off the platform, and stood in the street until they +were safely aboard, without telling them to step lively, or pulling them +up the steps; or knuckling them in the back to make them move forward. +He let them get fairly seated before be started the car, and so lost the +fun of seeing them lurch and stagger violently, and wildly clutch each +other for support. The Germans have so little sense of humor that +probably no one in the car would have been amused to see the strangers +flung upon the floor. No one apparently found it droll that the +conductor should touch his cap to them when he asked for their fare; no +one smiled at their efforts to make him understand where they wished to +go, and he did not wink at the other passengers in trying to find out. +Whenever the car stopped he descended first, and did not remount till the +dismounting passenger had taken time to get well away from it. When the +Marches got into the wrong car in coming home, and were carried beyond +their street, the conductor would not take their fare. + +The kindly civility which environed them went far to alleviate the +inclemency of the climate; it began to rain as soon as they left the +shelter of the car, but a citizen of whom they asked the nearest way to +the Circus Renz was so anxious to have them go aright that they did not +mind the wet, and the thought of his goodness embittered March's self- +reproach for under-tipping the sort of gorgeous heyduk, with a staff like +a drum-major's, who left his place at the circus door to get their +tickets. He brought them back with a magnificent bow, and was then as +visibly disappointed with the share of the change returned to him as a +child would have been. + +They went to their places with the sting of his disappointment rankling +in their hearts. "One ought always to overpay them," March sighed, "and +I will do it from this time forth; we shall not be much the poorer for +it. That heyduk is not going to get off with less than a mark when we +come out." As an earnest of his good faith he gave the old man who +showed them to their box a tip that made him bow double, and he bought +every conceivable libretto and play-bill offered him at prices fixed by +his remorse. + +"One ought to do it," he said. "We are of the quality of good geniuses +to these poor souls; we are Fortune in disguise; we are money found in +the road. It is an accursed system, but they are more its victims than +we." His wife quite agreed with him, and with the same good conscience +between them they gave themselves up to the pure joy which the circus, +of all modern entertainments, seems alone to inspire. The house was full +from floor to roof when they came ins and every one was intent upon the +two Spanish clowns, Lui-Lui and Soltamontes, whose drolleries spoke the +universal language of circus humor, and needed no translation into either +German or English. They had missed by an event or two the more patriotic +attraction of "Miss Darlings, the American Star," as she was billed in +English, but they were in time for one of those equestrian performances +which leave the spectator almost exanimate from their prolixity, and the +pantomimic piece which closed the evening. + +This was not given until nearly the whole house had gone out and stayed +itself with beer and cheese and ham and sausage, in the restaurant which +purveys these light refreshments in the summer theatres all over Germany. +When the people came back gorged to the throat, they sat down in the +right mood to enjoy the allegory of "The Enchanted Mountain's Fantasy; +the Mountain episodes; the High-interesting Sledges-Courses on the Steep +Acclivities; the Amazing-Up-rush of the thence plunging-Four Trains, +which arrive with Lightnings-swiftness at the Top of the over-40-feet- +high Mountain-the Highest Triumph of the To-day's Circus-Art; the Sledge- +journey in the Wizard-mountain, and the Fairy Ballet in the Realm of the +Ghost-prince, with Gold and Silver, Jewel, Bloomghosts, Gnomes, +Gnomesses, and Dwarfs, in never-till-now-seen Splendor of Costume." The +Marches were happy in this allegory, and happier in the ballet, which is +everywhere delightfully innocent, and which here appealed with the large +flat feet and the plain good faces of the 'coryphees' to all that was +simplest and sweetest in their natures. They could not have resisted, if +they had wished, that environment, of good-will; and if it had not been +for the disappointed heyduk, they would have got home from their evening +at the Circus Renz without a pang. + +They looked for him everywhere when they came out, but he had vanished, +and they were left with a regret which, if unavailing, was not too +poignant. In spite of it they had still an exhilaration in their release +from the companionship of their fellow-voyagers which they analyzed as +the psychical revulsion from the strain of too great interest in them. +Mrs. March declared that for the present, at least, she wanted Europe +quite to themselves; and she said that not even for the pleasure of +seeing Burnamy and Miss Triscoe come into their box together world she +have suffered an American trespass upon their exclusive possession of the +Circus Renz. + +In the audience she had seen German officers for the first time in +Hamburg, and she meant, if unremitting question could bring out the +truth, to know why she had not met any others. She had read much of the +prevalence and prepotence of the German officers who would try to push +her off the sidewalk, till they realized that she was an American woman, +and would then submit to her inflexible purpose of holding it. But she +had been some seven or eight hours in Hamburg, and nothing of the kind +had happened to her, perhaps because she had hardly yet walked a block in +the city streets, but perhaps also because there seemed to be very few +officers or military of any kind in Hamburg. + + + + +XXI. + +Their absence was plausibly explained, the next morning, by the young +German friend who came in to see the Marches at breakfast. He said +Hamburg had been so long a free republic that the presence of a large +imperial garrison was distasteful to the people, and as a matter of fact +there were very few soldiers quartered there, whether the authorities +chose to indulge the popular grudge or not. He was himself in a joyful +flutter of spirits, for he had just the day before got his release from +military service. He gave them a notion of what the rapture of a man +reprieved from death might be, and he was as radiantly happy in the ill +health which had got him his release as if it had been the greatest +blessing of heaven. He bubbled over with smiling regrets that he should +be leaving his home for the first stage of the journey which he was to +take in search of strength, just as they had come, and he pressed them to +say if there were not something that he could do for them. + +"Yes," said Mrs. March, with a promptness surprising to her husband, who +could think of nothing; "tell us where Heinrich Heine lived when he was +in Hamburg. My husband has always had a great passion for him and wants +to look him up everywhere." + +March had forgotten that Heine ever lived in Hamburg, and the young man +had apparently never known it. His face fell; he wished to make Mrs. +March believe that it was only Heine's uncle who had lived there; but she +was firm; and when he had asked among the hotel people he came back +gladly owning that he was wrong, and that the poet used to live in +Konigstrasse, which was very near by, and where they could easily know +the house by his bust set in its front. The portier and the head waiter +shared his ecstasy in so easily obliging the friendly American pair, and +joined him in minutely instructing the driver when they shut them into +their carriage. + +They did not know that his was almost the only laughing face they should +see in the serious German Empire; just as they did not know that it +rained there every day. As they drove off in the gray drizzle with the +unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine, they bade +their driver be very slow in taking them through Konigstrasse, so that he +should by no means miss Heine's dwelling, and he duly stopped in front of +a house bearing the promised bust. They dismounted in order to revere it +more at their ease, but the bust proved, by an irony bitterer than the +sick, heart-breaking, brilliant Jew could have imagined in his cruelest +moment, to be that of the German Milton, the respectable poet Klopstock, +whom Heine abhorred and mocked so pitilessly. + +In fact it was here that the good, much-forgotten Klopstock dwelt, +when he came home to live with a comfortable pension from the Danish +government; and the pilgrims to the mistaken shrine went asking about +among the neighbors in Konigstrasse, for some manner of house where Heine +might have lived; they would have been willing to accept a flat, or any +sort of two-pair back. The neighbors were somewhat moved by the anxiety +of the strangers; but they were not so much moved as neighbors in Italy +would have been. There vas no eager and smiling sympathy in the little +crowd that gathered to see what was going on; they were patient of +question and kind in their helpless response, but they were not gay. +To a man they had not heard of Heine; even the owner of a sausage and +blood-pudding shop across the way had not heard of him; the clerk of a +stationer-and-bookseller's next to the butcher's had heard of him, but he +had never heard that he lived in Konigstrasse; he never had heard where +he lived in Hamburg. + +The pilgrims to the fraudulent shrine got back into their carriage, and +drove sadly away, instructing their driver with the rigidity which their +limited German favored, not to let any house with a bust in its front +escape him. He promised, and took his course out through Konigstrasse, +and suddenly they found themselves in a world of such eld and quaintness +that they forgot Heine as completely as any of his countrymen had done. +They were in steep and narrow streets, that crooked and turned with no +apparent purpose of leading anywhere, among houses that looked down upon +them with an astonished stare from the leaden-sashed windows of their +timber-laced gables. The facades with their lattices stretching in bands +quite across them, and with their steep roofs climbing high in +successions of blinking dormers, were more richly mediaeval than anything +the travellers had ever dreamt of before, and they feasted themselves +upon the unimagined picturesqueness with a leisurely minuteness which +brought responsive gazers everywhere to the windows; windows were set +ajar; shop doors were darkened by curious figures from within, and the +traffic of the tortuous alleys was interrupted by their progress. They +could not have said which delighted them more--the houses in the +immediate foreground, or the sharp high gables in the perspectives and +the background; but all were like the painted scenes of the stage, and +they had a pleasant difficulty in realizing that they were not persons in +some romantic drama. + +The illusion remained with them and qualified the impression which +Hamburg made by her much-trolleyed Bostonian effect; by the decorous +activity and Parisian architecture of her business streets; by the +turmoil of her quays, and the innumerable masts and chimneys of her +shipping. At the heart of all was that quaintness, that picturesqueness +of the past, which embodied the spirit of the old Hanseatic city, and +seemed the expression of the home-side of her history. The sense of this +gained strength from such slight study of her annals as they afterwards +made, and assisted the digestion of some morsels of tough statistics. +In the shadow of those Gothic houses the fact that Hamburg was one of the +greatest coffee marts and money marts of the world had a romantic +glamour; and the fact that in the four years from 1870 till 1874 a +quarter of a million emigrants sailed on her ships for the United States +seemed to stretch a nerve of kindred feeling from those mediaeval streets +through the whole shabby length of Third Avenue. + +It was perhaps in this glamour, or this feeling of commercial solidarity, +that March went to have a look at the Hamburg Bourse, in the beautiful +new Rathhaus. It was not undergoing repairs, it was too new for that; +but it was in construction, and so it fulfilled the function of a public +edifice, in withholding its entire interest from the stranger. He could +not get into the Senate Chamber; but the Bourse was free to him, and when +he stepped within, it rose at him with a roar of voices and of feet like +the New York Stock Exchange. The spectacle was not so frantic; people +were not shaking their fists or fingers in each other's noses; but they +were all wild in the tamer German way, and he was glad to mount from the +Bourse to the poor little art gallery upstairs, and to shut out its +clamor. He was not so glad when he looked round on these, his first, +examples of modern German art. The custodian led him gently about and +said which things were for sale, and it made his heart ache to see how +bad they were, and to think that, bad as they were, he could not buy any +of them. + + + + +XXII. + +In the start from Cuxhaven the passengers had the irresponsible ease of +people ticketed through, and the steamship company had still the charge +of their baggage. But when the Marches left Hamburg for Leipsic (where +they had decided to break the long pull to Carlsbad), all the anxieties +of European travel, dimly remembered from former European days, offered +themselves for recognition. A porter vanished with their hand-baggage +before they could note any trait in him for identification; other porters +made away with their trunks; and the interpreter who helped March buy his +tickets, with a vocabulary of strictly railroad English, had to help him +find the pieces in the baggage-room, curiously estranged in a mountain of +alien boxes. One official weighed them; another obliged him to pay as +much in freight as for a third passenger, and gave him an illegible scrap +of paper which recorded their number and destination. The interpreter +and the porters took their fees with a professional effect of +dissatisfaction, and he went to wait with his wife amidst the smoking and +eating and drinking in the restaurant. They burst through with the rest +when the doors were opened to the train, and followed a glimpse of the +porter with their hand-bags, as he ran down the platform, still bent upon +escaping them, and brought him to bay at last in a car where he had got +very good seats for them, and sank into their places, hot and humiliated +by their needless tumult. + +As they cooled, they recovered their self-respect, and renewed a youthful +joy in some of the long-estranged facts. The road was rougher than the +roads at home; but for much less money they had the comfort, without the +unavailing splendor, of a Pullman in their second-class carriage. Mrs. +March had expected to be used with the severity on the imperial railroads +which she had failed to experience from the military on the Hamburg +sidewalks, but nothing could be kindlier than the whole management toward +her. Her fellow-travellers were not lavish of their rights, as Americans +are; what they got, that they kept; and in the run from Hamburg to +Leipsic she had several occasions to observe that no German, however +young or robust, dreams of offering a better place, if he has one, to a +lady in grace to her sex or age; if they got into a carriage too late to +secure a forward-looking seat, she rode backward to the end of that +stage. But if they appealed to their fellow-travellers for information +about changes, or stops, or any of the little facts that they wished to +make sure of, they were enlightened past possibility of error. At the +point where they might have gone wrong the explanations were renewed with +a thoughtfulness which showed that their anxieties had not been +forgotten. She said she could not see how any people could be both so +selfish and so sweet, and her husband seized the advantage of saying +something offensive: + +"You women are so pampered in America that you are astonished when you +are treated in Europe like the mere human beings you are." + +She answered with unexpected reasonableness: + +"Yes, there's something in that; but when the Germans have taught us how +despicable we are as women, why do they treat us so well as human +beings?" + +This was at ten o'clock, after she had ridden backward a long way, and at +last, within an hour of Leipsic, had got a seat confronting him. The +darkness had now hidden the landscape, but the impression of its few +simple elements lingered pleasantly in their sense: long levels, densely +wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests, and +checkered with fields of grain and grass, soaking under the thin rain +that from time to time varied the thin sunshine. + +The villages and peasants' cottages were notably few; but there was here +and there a classic or a gothic villa, which, at one point, an English- +speaking young lady turned from her Tauchnitz novel to explain as the +seat of some country gentleman; the land was in large holdings, and this +accounted for the sparsity of villages and cottages. + +She then said that she was a German teacher of English, in Hamburg, and +was going home to Potsdam for a visit. She seemed like a German girl out +of 'The Initials', and in return for this favor Mrs. March tried to +invest herself with some romantic interest as an American. She failed to +move the girl's fancy, even after she had bestowed on her an immense +bunch of roses which the young German friend in Hamburg had sent to them +just before they left their hotel. She failed, later, on the same ground +with the pleasant-looking English woman who got into their carriage at +Magdeburg, and talked over the 'London Illustrated News' with an English- +speaking Fraulein in her company; she readily accepted the fact of Mrs. +March's nationality, but found nothing wonderful in it, apparently; and +when she left the train she left Mrs. March to recall with fond regret +the old days in Italy when she first came abroad, and could make a whole +carriage full of Italians break into ohs and ahs by saying that she was +an American, and telling how far she had come across the sea. + +"Yes," March assented, "but that was a great while ago, and Americans +were much rarer than they are now in Europe. The Italians are so much +more sympathetic than the Germans and English, and they saw that you +wanted to impress them. Heaven knows how little they cared! And then, +you were a very pretty young girl in those days; or at least I thought +so." + +"Yes," she sighed, "and now I'm a plain old woman." + +"Oh, not quite so bad as that." + +"Yes, I am! Do you think they would have cared more if it had been Miss +Triscoe?" + +"Not so much as if it had been the pivotal girl. They would have found +her much more their ideal of the American woman; and even she would have +had to have been here thirty years ago." + +She laughed a little ruefully. "Well, at any rate, I should like to know +how Miss Triscoe would have affected them." + +"I should much rather know what sort of life that English woman is living +here with her German husband; I fancied she had married rank. I could +imagine how dull it must be in her little Saxon town, from the way she +clung to her Illustrated News, and explained the pictures of the +royalties to her friend. There is romance for you!" + +They arrived at Leipsic fresh and cheerful after their five hours' +journey, and as in a spell of their travelled youth they drove up through +the academic old town, asleep under its dimly clouded sky, and silent +except for the trolley-cars that prowled its streets with their feline +purr, and broke at times into a long, shrill caterwaul. A sense of the +past imparted itself to the well-known encounter with the portier and the +head waiter at the hotel door, to the payment of the driver, to the +endeavor of the secretary to have them take the most expensive rooms in +the house, and to his compromise upon the next most, where they found +themselves in great comfort, with electric lights and bells, and a quick +succession of fee-taking call-boys in dress-coats too large for them. +The spell was deepened by the fact, which March kept at the bottom of his +consciousness for the present, that one of their trunks was missing. +This linked him more closely to the travel of other days, and he spent +the next forenoon in a telegraphic search for the estray, with emotions +tinged by the melancholy of recollection, but in the security that since +it was somewhere in the keeping of the state railway, it would be finally +restored to him. + + + + +XXIII. + +Their windows, as they saw in the morning, looked into a large square of +aristocratic physiognomy, and of a Parisian effect in architecture, which +afterwards proved characteristic of the town, if not quite so +characteristic as to justify the passion of Leipsic for calling itself +Little Paris. The prevailing tone was of a gray tending to the pale +yellow of the Tauchnitz editions with which the place is more familiarly +associated in the minds of English-speaking travellers. It was rather +more sombre than it might have been if the weather had been fair; but a +quiet rain was falling dreamily that morning, and the square was provided +with a fountain which continued to dribble in the rare moments when the +rain forgot itself. The place was better shaded than need be in that +sunless land by the German elms that look like ours and it was +sufficiently stocked with German statues, that look like no others. It +had a monument, too, of the sort with which German art has everywhere +disfigured the kindly fatherland since the war with France. These +monuments, though they are so very ugly, have a sort of pathos as records +of the only war in which Germany unaided has triumphed against a foreign +foe, but they are as tiresome as all such memorial pomps must be. It is +not for the victories of a people that any other people can care. The +wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad wars, or +what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in death and +sorrow, and their fame is an offence to all men not concerned in them, +till time has softened it to a memory + + "Of old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago." + +It was for some such reason that while the Marches turned with instant +satiety from the swelling and strutting sculpture which celebrated the +Leipsic heroes of the war of 1870, they had heart for those of the war of +1813; and after their noonday dinner they drove willingly, in a pause of +the rain, out between yellowing harvests of wheat and oats to the field +where Napoleon was beaten by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians (it +always took at least three nations to beat the little wretch) fourscore +years before. Yet even there Mrs. March was really more concerned for +the sparsity of corn-flowers in the grain, which in their modern +character of Kaiserblumen she found strangely absent from their loyal +function; and March was more taken with the notion of the little gardens +which his guide told him the citizens could have in the suburbs of +Leipsic and enjoy at any trolley-car distance from their homes. He saw +certain of these gardens in groups, divided by low, unenvious fences, and +sometimes furnished with summer-houses, where the tenant could take his +pleasure in the evening air, with his family. The guide said he had such +a garden himself, at a rent of seven dollars a year, where he raised +vegetables and flowers, and spent his peaceful leisure; and March fancied +that on the simple domestic side of their life, which this fact gave him +a glimpse of, the Germans were much more engaging than in their character +of victors over either the First or the Third Napoleon. But probably +they would not have agreed with him, and probably nations will go on +making themselves cruel and tiresome till humanity at last prevails over +nationality. + +He could have put the case to the guide himself; but though the guide was +imaginably liberated to a cosmopolitan conception of things by three +years' service as waiter in English hotels, where he learned the +language, he might not have risen to this. He would have tried, for he +was a willing and kindly soul, though he was not a 'valet de place' by +profession. There seemed in fact but one of that useless and amusing +race (which is everywhere falling into decay through the rivalry of the +perfected Baedeker,) left in Leipsic, and this one was engaged, so that +the Marches had to devolve upon their ex-waiter, who was now the keeper +of a small restaurant. He gladly abandoned his business to the care of +his wife, in order to drive handsomely about in his best clothes, with +strangers who did not exact too much knowledge from him. In his zeal to +do something he possessed himself of March's overcoat when they +dismounted at their first gallery, and let fall from its pocket his +prophylactic flask of brandy, which broke with a loud crash on the marble +floor in the presence of several masterpieces, and perfumed the whole +place. The masterpieces were some excellent works of Luke Kranach, who +seemed the only German painter worth looking at when there were any Dutch +or Italian pictures near, but the travellers forgot the name and nature +of the Kranachs, and remembered afterwards only the shattered fragments +of the brandy-flask, just how they looked on the floor, and the fumes, +how they smelt, that rose from the ruin. + +It might have been a warning protest of the veracities against what they +were doing; but the madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel, was on +them, and they delivered themselves up to it as they used in their +ignorant youth, though now they knew its futility so well. They spared +themselves nothing that they had time for, that day, and they felt +falsely guilty for their omissions, as if they really had been duties to +art and history which must be discharged, like obligations to one's maker +and one's neighbor. + +They had a touch of genuine joy in the presence of the beautiful old +Rathhaus, and they were sensible of something like a genuine emotion in +passing the famous and venerable university; the very air of Leipsic is +redolent of printing and publication, which appealed to March in his +quality of editor, and they could not fail of an impression of the quiet +beauty of the town, with its regular streets of houses breaking into +suburban villas of an American sort, and intersected with many canals, +which in the intervals of the rain were eagerly navigated by pleasure +boats, and contributed to the general picturesqueness by their frequent +bridges, even during the drizzle. There seemed to be no churches to do, +and as it was a Sunday, the galleries were so early closed against them +that they were making a virtue as well as a pleasure of the famous scene +of Napoleon's first great defeat. + +By a concert between their guide and driver their carriage drew up at the +little inn by the road-side, which is also a museum stocked with relics +from the battle-field, and with objects of interest relating to it. Old +muskets, old swords, old shoes and old coats, trumpets, drums, gun- +carriages, wheels, helmets, cannon balls, grape-shot, and all the +murderous rubbish which battles come to at last, with proclamations, +autographs, caricatures and likenesses of Napoleon, and effigies of all +the other generals engaged, and miniatures and jewels of their womenkind, +filled room after room, through which their owner vaunted his way, with a +loud pounding voice and a bad breath. When he wished them to enjoy some +gross British satire or clumsy German gibe at Bonaparte's expense, and +put his face close to begin the laugh, he was something so terrible that +March left the place with a profound if not a reasoned regret that the +French had not won the battle of Leipsic. He walked away musing +pensively upon the traveller's inadequacy to the ethics of history when a +breath could so sway him against his convictions; but even after he had +cleansed his lungs with some deep respirations he found himself still a +Bonapartist in the presence of that stone on the rising ground where +Napoleon sat to watch the struggle on the vast plain, and see his empire +slipping through his blood-stained fingers. It was with difficulty that +he could keep from revering the hat and coat which are sculptured on the +stone, but it was well that he succeeded, for he could not make out then +or afterwards whether the habiliments represented were really Napoleon's +or not, and they might have turned out to be Barclay de Tolly's. + +While he stood trying to solve this question of clothes he was startled +by the apparition of a man climbing the little slope from the opposite +quarter, and advancing toward them. He wore the imperial crossed by the +pointed mustache once so familiar to a world much the worse for them, and +March had the shiver of a fine moment in which he fancied the Third +Napoleon rising to view the scene where the First had looked his coming +ruin in the face. + +"Why, it's Miss Triscoe!" cried his wife, and before March had noticed +the approach of another figure, the elder and the younger lady had rushed +upon each other, and encountered with a kiss. At the same time the +visage of the last Emperor resolved itself into the face of General +Triscoe, who gave March his hand in a more tempered greeting. + +The ladies began asking each other of their lives since their parting two +days before, and the men strolled a few paces away toward the distant +prospect of Leipsic, which at that point silhouettes itself in a noble +stretch of roofs and spires and towers against the horizon. + +General Triscoe seemed no better satisfied with Germany than he had been +on first stepping ashore at Cuxhaven. He might still have been in a pout +with his own country, but as yet he had not made up with any other; and +he said, "What a pity Napoleon didn't thrash the whole dunderheaded lot! +His empire would have been a blessing to them, and they would have had +some chance of being civilized under the French. All this unification of +nationalities is the great humbug of the century. Every stupid race +thinks it's happy because it's united, and civilization has been set back +a hundred years by the wars that were fought to bring the unions about; +and more wars will have to be fought to keep them up. What a farce it +is! What's become of the nationality of the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein, +or the French in the Rhine Provinces, or the Italians in Savoy?" + +March had thought something like this himself, but to have it put by +General Triscoe made it offensive. "I don't know. Isn't it rather +quarrelling with the course of human events to oppose accomplished facts? +The unifications were bound to be, just as the separations before them +were. And so far they have made for peace, in Europe at least, and peace +is civilization. Perhaps after a great many ages people will come +together through their real interests, the human interests; but at +present it seems as if nothing but a romantic sentiment of patriotism can +unite them. By-and-by they may find that there is nothing in it." + +"Perhaps," said the general, discontentedly. "I don't see much promise +of any kind in the future." + +"Well, I don't know. When you think of the solid militarism of Germany, +you seem remanded to the most hopeless moment of the Roman Empire; you +think nothing can break such a force; but my guide says that even in +Leipsic the Socialists outnumber all the other parties, and the army is +the great field of the Socialist propaganda. The army itself may be +shaped into the means of democracy--even of peace." + +"You're very optimistic," said Triscoe, curtly. "As I read the signs, +we are not far from universal war. In less than a year we shall make the +break ourselves in a war with Spain." He looked very fierce as he +prophesied, and he dotted March over with his staccato glances. + +"Well, I'll allow that if Tammany comes in this year, we shall have war +with Spain. You can't ask more than that, General Triscoe?" + +Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had not said a word of the 'battle of +Leipsic', or of the impersonal interests which it suggested to the men. +For all these, they might still have been sitting in their steamer chairs +on the promenade of the Norumbia at a period which seemed now of +geological remoteness. The girl accounted for not being in Dresden by +her father's having decided not to go through Berlin but to come by way +of Leipsic, which he thought they had better see; they had come without +stopping in Hamburg. They had not enjoyed Leipsic much; it had rained +the whole day before, and they had not gone out. She asked when Mrs. +March was going on to Carlsbad, and Mrs. March answered, the next +morning; her husband wished to begin his cure at once. + +Then Miss Triscoe pensively wondered if Carlsbad would do her father any +good; and Mrs. March discreetly inquired General Triscoe's symptoms. + +"Oh, he hasn't any. But I know he can't be well--with his gloomy +opinions." + +"They may come from his liver," said Mrs. March. "Nearly everything of +that kind does. I know that Mr. March has been terribly depressed at +times, and the doctor said it was nothing but his liver; and Carlsbad is +the great place for that, you know." + +"Perhaps I can get papa to run over some day, if he doesn't like Dresden. +It isn't very far, is it?" + +They referred to Mrs. March's Baedeker together, and found that it was +five hours. + +"Yes, that is what I thought," said Miss Triscoe, with a carelessness +which convinced Mrs. March she had looked up the fact already. + +"If you decide to come, you must let us get rooms for you at our hotel. +We're going to Pupp's; most of the English and Americans go to the hotels +on the Hill, but Pupp's is in the thick of it in the lower town; and it's +very gay, Mr. Kenby says; he's been there often. Mr. Burnamy is to get +our rooms." + +"I don't suppose I can get papa to go," said Miss Triscoe, so insincerely +that Mrs. March was sure she had talked over the different routes; to +Carlsbad with Burnamy--probably on the way from Cuxhaven. She looked up +from digging the point of her umbrella in the ground. "You didn't meet +him here this morning?" + +Mrs. March governed herself to a calm which she respected in asking, "Has +Mr. Burnamy been here?" + +"He came on with Mr. and Mrs. Eltwin, when we did, and they all decided +to stop over a day. They left on the twelve-o'clock train to-day." + +Mrs. March perceived that the girl had decided not to let the facts +betray themselves by chance, and she treated them as of no significance. + +"No, we didn't see him," she said, carelessly. + +The two men came walking slowly towards them, and Miss Triscoe said, +"We're going to Dresden this evening, but I hope we shall meet somewhere, +Mrs. March." + +"Oh, people never lose sight of each other in Europe; they can't; it's so +little!" + +"Agatha," said the girl's father, "Mr. March tells me that the museum +over there is worth seeing." + +"Well," the girl assented, and she took a winning leave of the Marches, +and moved gracefully away with her father. + +"I should have thought it was Agnes," said Mrs. March, following them +with her eyes before she turned upon her husband. "Did he tell you +Burnamy had been here? Well, he has! He has just gone on to Carlsbad. +He made, those poor old Eltwins stop over with him, so he could be with +her." + +"Did she say that?" + +"No, but of course he did." + +"Then it's all settled?" + +"No, it isn't settled. It's at the most interesting point." + +"Well, don't read ahead. You always want to look at the last page." + +"You were trying to look at the last page yourself," she retorted, and +she would have liked to punish him for his complex dishonesty toward the +affair; but upon the whole she kept her temper with him, and she made him +agree that Miss Triscoe's getting her father to Carlsbad was only a +question of time. + +They parted heart's-friends with their ineffectual guide, who was +affectionately grateful for the few marks they gave him, at the hotel +door; and they were in just the mood to hear men singing in a farther +room when they went down to supper. The waiter, much distracted from +their own service by his duties to it, told them it was the breakfast +party of students which they had heard beginning there about noon. The +revellers had now been some six hours at table, and he said they might +not rise before midnight; they had just got to the toasts, which were +apparently set to music. + +The students of right remained a vivid color in the impression of the +university town. They pervaded the place, and decorated it with their +fantastic personal taste in coats and trousers, as well as their corps +caps of green, white, red, and blue, but above all blue. They were not +easily distinguishable from the bicyclers who were holding one of the +dull festivals of their kind in Leipsic that day, and perhaps they were +sometimes both students and bicyclers. As bicyclers they kept about in +the rain, which they seemed not to mind; so far from being disheartened, +they had spirits enough to take one another by the waist at times and +waltz in the square before the hotel. At one moment of the holiday some +chiefs among them drove away in carriages; at supper a winner of prizes +sat covered with badges and medals; another who went by the hotel +streamed with ribbons; and an elderly man at his side was bespattered +with small knots and ends of them, as if he had been in an explosion of +ribbons somewhere. It seemed all to be as exciting for them, and it was +as tedious for the witnesses, as any gala of students and bicyclers at +home. + +Mrs. March remained with an unrequited curiosity concerning their +different colors and different caps, and she tried to make her husband +find out what they severally meant; he pretended a superior interest in +the nature of a people who had such a passion for uniforms that they were +not content with its gratification in their immense army, but indulged it +in every pleasure and employment of civil life. He estimated, perhaps +not very accurately, that only one man out of ten in Germany wore +citizens' dress; and of all functionaries he found that the dogs of the +women-and-dog teams alone had no distinctive dress; even the women had +their peasant costume. + +There was an industrial fair open at Leipsic which they went out of the +city to see after supper, along with a throng of Leipsickers, whom an +hour's interval of fine weather tempted forth on the trolley; and with +the help of a little corporal, who took a fee for his service with the +eagerness of a civilian, they got wheeled chairs, and renewed their +associations with the great Chicago Fair in seeing the exposition from +them. This was not, March said, quite the same as being drawn by a +woman-and-dog team, which would have been the right means of doing a +German fair; but it was something to have his chair pushed by a slender +young girl, whose stalwart brother applied his strength to the chair of +the lighter traveller; and it was fit that the girl should reckon the +common hire, while the man took the common tip. They made haste to leave +the useful aspects of the fair, and had themselves trundled away to the +Colonial Exhibit, where they vaguely expected something like the +agreeable corruptions of the Midway Plaisance. The idea of her colonial +progress with which Germany is trying to affect the home-keeping +imagination of her people was illustrated by an encampment of savages +from her Central-African possessions. They were getting their supper at +the moment the Marches saw them, and were crouching, half naked, around +the fires under the kettles, and shivering from the cold, but they were +not very characteristic of the imperial expansion, unless perhaps when an +old man in a red blanket suddenly sprang up with a knife in his hand and +began to chase a boy round the camp. The boy was lighter-footed, and +easily outran the sage, who tripped at times on his blanket. None of the +other Central Africans seemed to care for the race, and without waiting +for the event, the American spectators ordered themselves trundled away +to another idle feature of the fair, where they hoped to amuse themselves +with the image of Old Leipsic. + +This was so faithfully studied from the past in its narrow streets and +Gothic houses that it was almost as picturesque as the present epoch in +the old streets of Hamburg. A drama had just begun to be represented on +a platform of the public square in front of a fourteenth-century beer- +house, with people talking from the windows round, and revellers in the +costume of the period drinking beer and eating sausages at tables in the +open air. Their eating and drinking were genuine, and in the midst of it +a real rain began, to pour down upon them, without affecting them any +more than if they had been Germans of the nineteenth century. But it +drove the Americans to a shelter from which they could not see the play, +and when it held up, they made their way back to their hotel. + +Their car was full of returning pleasurers, some of whom were happy +beyond the sober wont of the fatherland. The conductor took a special +interest in his tipsy passengers, trying to keep them in order, and +genially entreating them to be quiet when they were too obstreperous. +From time to time he got some of them off, and then, when he remounted +the car, he appealed to the remaining passengers for their sympathy with +an innocent smile, which the Americans, still strange to the unjoyous +physiognomy of the German Empire, failed to value at its rare worth. + +Before he slept that night March tried to assemble from the experiences +and impressions of the day some facts which he would not be ashamed of as +a serious observer of life in Leipsic, and he remembered that their guide +had said house-rent was very low. He generalized from the guide's +content with his fee that the Germans were not very rapacious; and he +became quite irrelevantly aware that in Germany no man's clothes fitted +him, or seemed expected to fit him; that the women dressed somewhat +better, and were rather pretty sometimes, and that they had feet as large +as the kind hearts of the Germans of every age and sex. He was able to +note, rather more freshly, that with all their kindness the Germans were +a very nervous people, if not irritable, and at the least cause gave way +to an agitation, which indeed quickly passed, but was violent while it +lasted. Several times that day he had seen encounters between the +portier and guests at the hotel which promised violence, but which ended +peacefully as soon as some simple question of train-time was solved. +The encounters always left the portier purple and perspiring, as any +agitation must with a man so tight in his livery. He bemoaned himself +after one of them as the victim of an unhappy calling, in which he could +take no exercise. "It is a life of excitements, but not of movements," +he explained to March; and when he learned where he was going, he +regretted that he could not go to Carlsbad too. "For sugar?" he asked, +as if there were overmuch of it in his own make. + +March felt the tribute, but he had to say, "No; liver." + +"Ah!" said the portier, with the air of failing to get on common ground +with him. + + + + +XXV. + +The next morning was so fine that it would have been a fine morning in +America. Its beauty was scarcely sullied, even subjectively, by the +telegram which the portier sent after the Marches from the hotel, saying +that their missing trunk had not yet been found, and their spirits were +as light as the gay little clouds which blew about in the sky, when their +train drew out in the sunshine, brilliant on the charming landscape all +the way to Carlsbad. A fatherly 'traeger' had done his best to get them +the worst places in a non-smoking compartment, but had succeeded so +poorly that they were very comfortable, with no companions but a mother +and daughter, who spoke German in soft low tones together. Their +compartment was pervaded by tobacco fumes from the smokers, but as these +were twice as many as the non-smokers, it was only fair, and after March +had got a window open it did not matter, really. + +He asked leave of the strangers in his German, and they consented in +theirs; but he could not master the secret of the window-catch, and the +elder lady said in English, "Let me show you," and came to his help. + +The occasion for explaining that they were Americans and accustomed to +different car windows was so tempting that Mrs. March could not forbear, +and the other ladies were affected as deeply as she could wish. Perhaps +they were the more affected because it presently appeared that they had +cousins in New York whom she knew of, and that they were acquainted with +an American family that had passed the winter in Berlin. Life likes to +do these things handsomely, and it easily turned out that this was a +family of intimate friendship with the Marches; the names, familiarly +spoken, abolished all strangeness between the travellers; and they +entered into a comparison of tastes, opinions, and experiences, from +which it seemed that the objects and interests of cultivated people in +Berlin were quite the same as those of cultivated people in New York. +Each of the parties to the discovery disclaimed any superiority for their +respective civilizations; they wished rather to ascribe a greater charm +and virtue to the alien conditions; and they acquired such merit with one +another that when the German ladies got out of the train at Franzensbad, +the mother offered Mrs. March an ingenious folding footstool which she +had admired. In fact, she left her with it clasped to her breast, and +bowing speechless toward the giver in a vain wish to express her +gratitude. + +"That was very pretty of her, my dear," said March. "You couldn't have +done that." + +"No," she confessed; "I shouldn't have had the courage. The courage of +my emotions," she added, thoughtfully. + +"Ah, that's the difference! A Berliner could do it, and a Bostonian +couldn't. Do you think it so much better to have the courage of your +convictions?" + +"I don't know. It seems to me that I'm less and less certain of +everything that I used to be sure of." + +He laughed, and then he said, "I was thinking how, on our wedding +journey, long ago, that Gray Sister at the Hotel Dieu in Quebec offered +you a rose." + +"Well?" + +"That was to your pretty youth. Now the gracious stranger gives you a +folding stool." + +"To rest my poor old feet. Well, I would rather have it than a rose, +now." + +"You bent toward her at just the slant you had when you took the flower +that time; I noticed it. I didn't see that you looked so very different. +To be sure the roses in your cheeks have turned into rosettes; but +rosettes are very nice, and they're much more permanent; I prefer them; +they will keep in any climate." + +She suffered his mockery with an appreciative sigh. "Yes, our age +caricatures our youth, doesn't it?" + +"I don't think it gets much fun out of it," he assented. + +"No; but it can't help it. I used to rebel against it when it first +began. I did enjoy being young." + +"You did, my dear," he said, taking her hand tenderly; she withdrew it, +because though she could bear his sympathy, her New England nature could +not bear its expression. "And so did I; and we were both young a long +time. Travelling brings the past back, don't you think? There at that +restaurant, where we stopped for dinner--" + +"Yes, it was charming! Just as it used to be! With that white cloth, +and those tall shining bottles of wine, and the fruit in the centre, and +the dinner in courses, and that young waiter who spoke English, and was +so nice! I'm never going home; you may, if you like." + +"You bragged to those ladies about our dining-cars; and you said that our +railroad restaurants were quite as good as the European." + +"I had to do that. But I knew better; they don't begin to be." + +"Perhaps not; but I've been thinking that travel is a good deal alike +everywhere. It's the expression of the common civilization of the world. +When I came out of that restaurant and ran the train down, and then found +that it didn't start for fifteen minutes, I wasn't sure whether I was at +home or abroad. And when we changed cars at Eger, and got into this +train which had been baking in the sun for us outside the station, I +didn't know but I was back in the good old Fitchburg depot. To be sure, +Wallenstein wasn't assassinated at Boston, but I forgot his murder at +Eger, and so that came to the same thing. It's these confounded fifty- +odd years. I used to recollect everything." + +He had got up and was looking out of the window at the landscape, which +had not grown less amiable in growing rather more slovenly since they had +crossed the Saxon bolder into Bohemia. All the morning and early +afternoon they had run through lovely levels of harvest, where men were +cradling the wheat and women were binding it into sheaves in the narrow +fields between black spaces of forest. After they left Eger, there was +something more picturesque and less thrifty in the farming among the low +hills which they gradually mounted to uplands, where they tasted a +mountain quality in the thin pure air. The railroad stations were +shabbier; there was an indefinable touch of something Southern in the +scenery and the people. Lilies were rocking on the sluggish reaches of +the streams, and where the current quickened, tall wheels were lifting +water for the fields in circles of brimming and spilling pockets. Along +the embankments, where a new track was being laid, barefooted women were +at work with pick and spade and barrow, and little yellow-haired girls +were lugging large white-headed babies, and watching the train go by. +At an up grade where it slowed in the ascent he began to throw out to the +children the pfennigs which had been left over from the passage in +Germany, and he pleased himself with his bounty, till the question +whether the children could spend the money forced itself upon him. He +sat down feeling less like a good genius than a cruel magician who had +tricked them with false wealth; but he kept his remorse to himself, and +tried to interest his wife in the difference of social and civic ideal +expressed in the change of the inhibitory notices at the car windows, +which in Germany had strongliest forbidden him to outlean himself, and +now in Austria entreated him not to outbow himself. She refused to share +in the speculation, or to debate the yet nicer problem involved by the +placarded prayer in the washroom to the Messrs. Travellers not to take +away the soap; and suddenly he felt himself as tired as she looked, with +that sense of the futility of travel which lies in wait for every one who +profits by travel. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Bad wars, or what are comically called good wars +Calm of those who have logic on their side +Decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance +Explained perhaps too fully +Futility of travel +Humanity may at last prevail over nationality +Impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much +Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of +Life of the ship, like the life of the sea: a sodden monotony +Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous +Madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel +Night so bad that it was worse than no night at all +Our age caricatures our youth +Prices fixed by his remorse +Recipes for dishes and diseases +Reckless and culpable optimism +Repeated the nothings they had said already +She cares for him: that she was so cold shows that +She could bear his sympathy, but not its expression +Suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism +They were so near in age, though they were ten years apart +Unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine +Wilful sufferers +Woman harnessed with a dog to a cart +Wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests +Work he was so fond of and so weary of + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Silver Wedding Journey, v1 +by William Dean Howells + + + + + + +THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY + + +PART II. + +XXVI. + +They found Burnamy expecting them at the station in Carlsbad, and she +scolded him like a mother for taking the trouble to meet them, while she +kept back for the present any sign of knowing that he had staid over a +day with the Triscoes in Leipsic. He was as affectionately glad to see +her and her husband as she could have wished, but she would have liked it +better if he had owned up at once about Leipsic. He did not, and it +seemed to her that he was holding her at arm's-length in his answers +about his employer. He would not say how he liked his work, or how he +liked Mr. Stoller; he merely said that they were at Pupp's together, and +that he had got in a good day's work already; and since he would say no +more, she contented herself with that. + +The long drive from the station to the hotel was by streets that wound +down the hill-side like those of an Italian mountain town, between gay +stuccoed houses, of Southern rather than of Northern architecture; and +the impression of a Latin country was heightened at a turn of the road +which brought into view a colossal crucifix planted against a curtain of +dark green foliage on the brow of one of the wooded heights that +surrounded Carlsbad. When they reached the level of the Tepl, the hill- +fed torrent that brawls through the little city under pretty bridges +within walls of solid masonry, they found themselves in almost the only +vehicle on a brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan world. +Germans in every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black gabardines, +with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their black velvet +derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests in flowing +robes and brimless high hats; Russians in caftans and Cossacks in +Astrakhan caps, accented the more homogeneous masses of western +Europeans, in which it would have been hard to say which were English, +French or Italians. Among the vividly dressed ladies, some were +imaginably Parisian from their chic costumes, but they might easily have +been Hungarians or Levantines of taste; some Americans, who might have +passed unknown in the perfection of their dress, gave their nationality +away in the flat wooden tones of their voices, which made themselves +heard above the low hum of talk and the whisper of the innumerable feet. + +The omnibus worked its way at a slow walk among the promenaders going and +coming between the rows of pollard locusts on one side and the bright +walls of the houses on the other. Under the trees were tables, served by +pretty bareheaded girls who ran to and from the restaurants across the +way. On both sides flashed and glittered the little shops full of +silver, glass, jewelry, terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and all the +idle frippery of watering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, and they +suggested Saratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no place else +in the world, as the crowd which might have been that of other cities at +certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its habitual effect. + +"Do you like it?" asked Burnamy, as if he owned the place, and Mrs. March +saw how simple-hearted he was in his reticence, after all. She was ready +to bless him when they reached the hotel and found that his interest had +got them the only rooms left in the house. This satisfied in her the +passion for size which is at the bottom of every American heart, and +which perhaps above all else marks us the youngest of the peoples. +We pride ourselves on the bigness of our own things, but we are not +ungenerous, and when we go to Europe and find things bigger than ours, we +are magnanimously happy in them. Pupp's, in its altogether different +way, was larger than any hotel at Saratoga or at Niagara; and when +Burnamy told her that it sometimes fed fifteen thousand people a day in +the height of the season, she was personally proud of it. + +She waited with him in the rotunda of the hotel, while the secretary led +March off to look at the rooms reserved for them, and Burnamy hospitably +turned the revolving octagonal case in the centre of the rotunda where +the names of the guests were put up. They were of all nations, but there +were so many New Yorkers whose names ended in berg, and thal, and stern, +and baum that she seemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on +Broadway. A large man of unmistakable American make, but with so little +that was of New England or New York in his presence that she might not at +once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quill +toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He had a jealous blue eye, into +which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straight mouth +stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawny chin-beard, and he +wore his soft hat so far back from his high forehead (it showed to the +crown when he took his hat off) that he had the effect of being +uncovered. + +At his approach Burnamy turned, and with a flush said: "Oh! Let me +introduce Mr. Stoller, Mrs. March." + +Stoller took his toothpick out of his mouth and bowed; then he seemed to +remember, and took off his hat. "You see Jews enough, here to make you +feel at home?" he asked; and he added: "Well, we got some of 'em in +Chicago, too, I guess. This young man"--he twisted his head toward +Burnamy" found you easy enough?" + +"It was very good of him to meet us," Mrs. March began. "We didn't +expect--" + +"Oh, that's all right," said Stoller, putting his toothpick back, and his +hat on. "We'd got through for the day; my doctor won't let me work all I +want to, here. Your husband's going to take the cure, they tell me. +Well, he wants to go to a good doctor, first. You can't go and drink +these waters hit or miss. I found that out before I came." + +"Oh, no!" said Mrs. March, and she wished to explain how they had been +advised; but he said to Burnamy: + +"I sha'n't want you again till ten to-morrow morning. Don't let me +interrupt you," he added patronizingly to Mrs. March. He put his hand up +toward his hat, and sauntered away out of the door. + +Burnamy did not speak; and she only asked at last, to relieve the +silence, "Is Mr. Stoller an American?" + +"Why, I suppose so," he answered, with an uneasy laugh. "His people were +German emigrants who settled in Southern Indiana. That makes him as much +American as any of us, doesn't it?" + +Burnamy spoke with his mind on his French-Canadian grandfather, who had +come down through Detroit, when their name was Bonami; but Mrs. March +answered from her eight generations of New England ancestry. "Oh, for +the West, yes, perhaps," and they neither of them said anything more +about Stoller. + +In their room, where she found March waiting for her amidst their +arriving baggage, she was so full of her pent-up opinions of Burnamy's +patron that she, would scarcely speak of the view from their windows of +the wooded hills up and down the Tepl. "Yes, yes; very nice, and I know +I shall enjoy it ever so much. But I don't know what you will think of +that poor young Burnamy!" + +"Why, what's happened to him?" + +"Happened? Stoller's happened." + +"Oh, have you seen him, already? Well?" + +"Well, if you had been going to pick out that type of man, you'd have +rejected him, because you'd have said he was too pat. He's like an actor +made up for a Western millionaire. Do you remember that American in +'L'Etranger' which Bernhardt did in Boston when she first came? He, +looks exactly like that, and he has the worst manners. He stood talking +to me with his hat on, and a toothpick in his mouth; and he made me feel +as if he had bought me, along with Burnamy, and had paid too much. If +you don't give him a setting down, Basil, I shall never speak to you; +that's all. I'm sure Burnamy is in some trouble with him; he's got some +sort of hold upon him; what it could be in such a short time, I can't +imagine; but if ever a man seemed to be, in a man's power, he does, in +his! + +"Now," said March, "your pronouns have got so far beyond me that I think +we'd better let it all go till after supper; perhaps I shall see Stoller +myself by that time." + +She had been deeply stirred by her encounter with Stoller, but she +entered with impartial intensity into the fact that the elevator at +Pupp's had the characteristic of always coming up and never going down +with passengers. It was locked into its closet with a solid door, and +there was no bell to summon it, or any place to take it except on the +ground-floor; but the stairs by which she could descend were abundant and +stately; and on one landing there was the lithograph of one of the +largest and ugliest hotels in New York; how ugly it was, she said she +should never have known if she had not seen it there. + +The dining-room was divided into the grand saloon, where they supped amid +rococo sculptures and frescoes, and the glazed veranda opening by vast +windows on a spread of tables without, which were already filling up for +the evening concert. Around them at the different tables there were +groups of faces and figures fascinating in their strangeness, with that +distinction which abashes our American level in the presence of European +inequality. + +"How simple and unimpressive we are, Basil," she said, "beside all these +people! I used to feel it in Europe when I was young, and now I'm +certain that we must seem like two faded-in old village photographs. We +don't even look intellectual! I hope we look good." + +"I know I do," said March. The waiter went for their supper, and they +joined in guessing the different nationalities in the room. A French +party was easy enough; a Spanish mother and daughter were not difficult, +though whether they were not South-American remained uncertain; two +elderly maiden ladies were unmistakably of central Massachusetts, and +were obviously of a book-club culture that had left no leaf unturned; +some Triestines gave themselves away by their Venetian accent; but a +large group at a farther table were unassignable in the strange language +which they clattered loudly together, with bursts of laughter. They were +a family party of old and young, they were having a good time, with a +freedom which she called baronial; the ladies wore white satin, or black +lace, but the men were in sack-coats; she chose to attribute them, for no +reason but their outlandishness, to Transylvania. March pretended to +prefer a table full of Germans, who were unmistakably bourgeois, and yet +of intellectual effect. He chose as his favorite a middle-aged man of +learned aspect, and they both decided to think of him as the Herr +Professor, but they did not imagine how perfectly the title fitted him +till he drew a long comb from his waistcoat pocket and combed his hair +and beard with it above the table. + +The wine wrought with the Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together +at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them. One old gentleman +had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums when +he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless except +for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between. Suddenly he +choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up before +him, and-- + +"Noblesse oblige," said March, with the tone of irony which he reserved +for his wife's preoccupations with aristocracies of all sorts. "I think +I prefer my Hair Professor, bourgeois, as he is." + +The ladies attributively of central Massachusetts had risen from their +table, and were making for the door without having paid for their supper. +The head waiter ran after them; with a real delicacy for their mistake he +explained that though in most places the meals were charged in the bill, +it was the custom in Carlsbad to pay for them at the table; one could see +that he was making their error a pleasant adventure to them which they +could laugh over together, and write home about without a pang. + +"And I," said Mrs. March, shamelessly abandoning the party of the +aristocracy, "prefer the manners of the lower classes." + +"Oh, yes," he admitted. "The only manners we have at home are black +ones. But you mustn't lose courage. Perhaps the nobility are not always +so baronial." + +"I don't know whether we have manners at home," she said, "and I don't +believe I care. At least we have decencies." + +"Don't be a jingo," said her husband. + + + + +XXVII. + +Though Stoller had formally discharged Burnamy from duty for the day, he +was not so full of resources in himself, and he had not so general an +acquaintance in the hotel but he was glad to have the young fellow make +up to him in the reading-room, that night. He laid down a New York paper +ten days old in despair of having left any American news in it, and +pushed several continental Anglo-American papers aside with his elbow, as +he gave a contemptuous glance at the foreign journals, in Bohemian, +Hungarian, German, French, and Italian, which littered the large table. + +"I wonder," he said, "how long it'll take'em, over here, to catch on to +our way of having pictures?" + +Burnamy had come to his newspaper work since illustrated journalism was +established, and he had never had any shock from it at home, but so +sensitive is youth to environment that, after four days in Europe, the +New York paper Stoller had laid down was already hideous to him. From +the politic side of his nature, however, he temporized with Stoller's +preference. "I suppose it will be some time yet." + +"I wish," said Stoller, with a savage disregard of expressed sequences +and relevancies, "I could ha' got some pictures to send home with that +letter this afternoon: something to show how they do things here, and be +a kind of object-lesson." This term had come up in a recent campaign +when some employers, by shutting down their works, were showing their +employees what would happen if the employees voted their political +opinions into effect, and Stoller had then mastered its meaning and was +fond of using it. "I'd like 'em to see the woods around here, that the +city owns, and the springs, and the donkey-carts, and the theatre, and +everything, and give 'em some practical ideas." + +Burnamy made an uneasy movement. + +"I'd 'a' liked to put 'em alongside of some of our improvements, and show +how a town can be carried on when it's managed on business principles. +"Why didn't you think of it?" + +"Really, I don't know," said Burnamy, with a touch of impatience. + +They had not met the evening before on the best of terms. Stoller had +expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his displeasure +with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have spent at +Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for the +delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that by +working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had got +Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in time for +the first steamer the letter which was to appear over the proprietor's +name in his paper. It was a sort of rough but very full study of the +Carlsbad city government, the methods of taxation, the municipal +ownership of the springs and the lands, and the public control in +everything. It condemned the aristocratic constitution of the +municipality, but it charged heavily in favor of the purity, beneficence, +and wisdom of the administration, under which there was no poverty and no +idleness, and which was managed like any large business. + +Stoller had sulkily recurred to his displeasure, once or twice, and +Burnamy suffered it submissively until now. But now, at the change in +Burnamy's tone, he changed his manner a little. + +"Seen your friends since supper?" he asked. + +"Only a moment. They are rather tired, and they've gone to bed." + +That the fellow that edits that book you write for?" + +"Yes; he owns it, too." + +The notion of any sort of ownership moved Stoller's respect, and he asked +more deferentially, "Makin' a good thing out of it?" + +"A living, I suppose. Some of the high-class weeklies feel the +competition of the ten-cent monthlies. But 'Every Other Week' is about +the best thing we've got in the literary way, and I guess it's holding +its own." + +"Have to, to let the editor come to Carlsbad," Stoller said, with a +return to the sourness of his earlier mood. "I don't know as I care much +for his looks; I seen him when he came in with you. No snap to him." +He clicked shut the penknife he had been paring his nails with, and +started up with the abruptness which marked all his motions, mental and +physical; as he walked heavily out of the room he said, without looking +at Burnamy, "You want to be ready by half past ten at the latest." + +Stoller's father and mother were poor emigrants who made their way to the +West with the instinct for sordid prosperity native to their race and +class; and they set up a small butcher shop in the little Indiana town +where their son was born, and throve in it from the start. He could +remember his mother helping his father make the sausage and head-cheese +and pickle the pigs' feet, which they took turns in selling at as great a +price as they could extort from the townspeople. She was a good and +tender mother, and when her little Yawcup, as the boys called Jacob in +mimicry after her, had grown to the school-going age, she taught him to +fight the Americans, who stoned him when he came out of his gate, and +mobbed his home-coming; and mocked and tormented him at play-time till +they wore themselves into a kindlier mind toward him through the +exhaustion of their invention. No one, so far as the gloomy, stocky, +rather dense little boy could make out, ever interfered in his behalf; +and he grew up in bitter shame for his German origin, which entailed upon +him the hard fate of being Dutch among the Americans. He hated his +native speech so much that he cried when he was forced to use it with his +father and mother at home; he furiously denied it with the boys who +proposed to parley with him in it on such terms as "Nix come arouce in de +Dytchman's house." He disused it so thoroughly that after his father +took him out of school, when he was old enough to help in the shop, he +could not get back to it. He regarded his father's business as part of +his national disgrace, and at the cost of leaving his home he broke away +from it, and informally apprenticed himself to the village blacksmith and +wagon-maker. When it came to his setting up for himself in the business +he had chosen, he had no help from his father, who had gone on adding +dollar to dollar till he was one of the richest men in the place. + +Jacob prospered too; his old playmates, who had used him so cruelly, had +many of them come to like him; but as a Dutchman they never dreamt of +asking him to their houses when they were young people, any more than +when they were children. He was long deeply in love with an American +girl whom he had never spoken to, and the dream of his life was to marry +an American. He ended by marrying the daughter of Pferd the brewer, who +had been at an American school in Indianapolis, and had come home as +fragilely and nasally American as anybody. She made him a good, sickly, +fretful wife; and bore him five children, of whom two survived, with no +visible taint of their German origin. + +In the mean time Jacob's father had died and left his money to his son, +with the understanding that he was to provide for his mother, who would +gladly have given every cent to him and been no burden to him, if she +could. He took her home, and cared tenderly for her as long as she +lived; and she meekly did her best to abolish herself in a household +trying so hard to be American. She could not help her native accent, but +she kept silence when her son's wife had company; and when her eldest +granddaughter began very early to have American callers, she went out of +the room; they would not have noticed her if she had staid. + +Before this Jacob had come forward publicly in proportion to his +financial importance in the community. He first commended himself to the +Better Element by crushing out a strike in his Buggy Works, which were +now the largest business interest of the place; and he rose on a wave of +municipal reform to such a height of favor with the respectable classes +that he was elected on a citizens' ticket to the Legislature. In the +reaction which followed he was barely defeated for Congress, and was +talked of as a dark horse who might be put up for the governorship some +day; but those who knew him best predicted that he would not get far in +politics, where his bull-headed business ways would bring him to ruin +sooner or later; they said, "You can't swing a bolt like you can a +strike." + +When his mother died, he surprised his old neighbors by going to live in +Chicago, though he kept his works in the place where he and they had +grown up together. His wife died shortly after, and within four years he +lost his three eldest children; his son, it was said, had begun to go +wrong first. But the rumor of his increasing wealth drifted back from +Chicago; he was heard of in different enterprises and speculations; at +last it was said that he had bought a newspaper, and then his boyhood +friends decided that Jake was going into politics again. + +In the wider horizons and opener atmosphere of the great city he came to +understand better that to be an American in all respects was not the +best. His mounting sense of importance began to be retroactive in the +direction of his ancestral home; he wrote back to the little town near +Wurzburg which his people had come from, and found that he had relatives +still living there, some of whom had become people of substance; and +about the time his health gave way from life-long gluttony, and he was +ordered to Carlsbad, he had pretty much made up his mind to take his +younger daughters and put them in school for a year or two in Wurzburg, +for a little discipline if not education. He had now left them there, to +learn the language, which he had forgotten with such heart-burning and +shame, and music, for which they had some taste. + +The twins loudly lamented their fate, and they parted from their father +with open threats of running away; and in his heart he did not altogether +blame them. He came away from Wurzburg raging at the disrespect for his +money and his standing in business which had brought him a more galling +humiliation there than anything he had suffered in his boyhood at Des +Vaches. It intensified him in his dear-bought Americanism to the point +of wishing to commit lese majesty in the teeth of some local dignitaries +who had snubbed him, and who seemed to enjoy putting our eagle to shame +in his person; there was something like the bird of his step-country in +Stoller's pale eyes and huge beak. + + + + +XXVIII. + +March sat with a company of other patients in the anteroom of the doctor, +and when it came his turn to be prodded and kneaded, he was ashamed at +being told he was not so bad a case as he had dreaded. The doctor wrote +out a careful dietary for him, with a prescription of a certain number of +glasses of water at a certain spring and a certain number of baths, and a +rule for the walks he was to take before and after eating; then the +doctor patted him on the shoulder and pushed him caressingly out of his +inner office. It was too late to begin his treatment that day, but he +went with his wife to buy a cup, with a strap for hanging it over his +shoulder, and he put it on so as to be an invalid with the others at +once; he came near forgetting the small napkin of Turkish towelling which +they stuffed into their cups, but happily the shopman called him back in +time to sell it to him. + +At five the next morning he rose, and on his way to the street exchanged +with the servants cleaning the hotel stairs the first of the gloomy +'Guten Morgens' which usher in the day at Carlsbad. They cannot be so +finally hopeless as they sound; they are probably expressive only of the +popular despair of getting through with them before night; but March +heard the salutations sorrowfully groaned out on every hand as he joined +the straggling current of invalids which swelled on the way past the +silent shops and cafes in the Alte Wiese, till it filled the street, and +poured its thousands upon the promenade before the classic colonnade of +the Muhlbrunn. On the other bank of the Tepl the Sprudel flings its +steaming waters by irregular impulses into the air under a pavilion of +iron and glass; but the Muhlbrunn is the source of most resort. There is +an instrumental concert somewhere in Carlsbad from early rising till +bedtime; and now at the Muhlbrunn there was an orchestra already playing; +and under the pillared porch, as well as before it, the multitude +shuffled up and down, draining their cups by slow sips, and then taking +each his place in the interminable line moving on to replenish them at +the spring. + +A picturesque majority of Polish Jews, whom some vice of their climate is +said peculiarly to fit for the healing effects of Carlsbad, most took his +eye in their long gabardines of rusty black and their derby hats of plush +or velvet, with their corkscrew curls coming down before their ears. +They were old and young, they were grizzled and red and black, but they +seemed all well-to-do; and what impresses one first and last at Carlsbad +is that its waters are mainly for the healing of the rich. After the +Polish Jews, the Greek priests of Russian race were the most striking +figures. There were types of Latin ecclesiastics, who were striking in +their way too; and the uniforms of certain Austrian officers and soldiers +brightened the picture. Here and there a southern face, Italian or +Spanish or Levantine, looked passionately out of the mass of dull German +visages; for at Carlsbad the Germans, more than any other gentile nation, +are to the fore. Their misfits, their absence of style, imparted the +prevalent effect; though now and then among the women a Hungarian, or +Pole, or Parisian, or American, relieved the eye which seeks beauty and +grace rather than the domestic virtues. There were certain faces, types +of discomfort and disease, which appealed from the beginning to the end. +A young Austrian, yellow as gold, and a livid South-American, were of a +lasting fascination to March. + +What most troubled him, in his scrutiny of the crowd, was the difficulty +of assigning people to their respective nations, and he accused his years +of having dulled his perceptions; but perhaps it was from their long +disuse in his homogeneous American world. The Americans themselves fused +with the European races who were often so hard to make out; his fellow- +citizens would not be identified till their bad voices gave them away; +he thought the women's voices the worst. + +At the springs, a line of young girls with a steady mechanical action +dipped the cups into the steaming source, and passed them impersonally up +to their owners. With the patients at the Muhlbrunn it was often a half- +hour before one's turn carne, and at all a strict etiquette forbade any +attempt to anticipate it. The water was merely warm and flat, and after +the first repulsion one could forget it. March formed a childish habit +of counting ten between the sips, and of finishing the cup with a gulp +which ended it quickly; he varied his walks between cups by going +sometimes to a bridge at the end of the colonnade where a group of +Triestines were talking Venetian, and sometimes to the little Park beyond +the Kurhaus, where some old women were sweeping up from the close sward +the yellow leaves which the trees had untidily dropped overnight. He +liked to sit there and look at the city beyond the Tepl, where it climbed +the wooded heights in terraces till it lost its houses in the skirts and +folds of the forest. Most mornings it rained, quietly, absent-mindedly, +and this, with the chili in the air, deepened a pleasant illusion of +Quebec offered by the upper town across the stream; but there were sunny +mornings when the mountains shone softly through a lustrous mist, and the +air was almost warm. + +Once in his walk he found himself the companion of Burnamy's employer, +whom he had sometimes noted in the line at the Muhlbrunn, waiting his +turn, cup in hand, with a face of sullen impatience. Stoller explained +that though you could have the water brought to you at your hotel, he +chose to go to the spring for the sake of the air; it was something you +had got to live through; before he had that young Burnamy to help him he +did not know what to do with his time, but now, every minute he was not +eating or sleeping he was working; his cure did not oblige him to walk +much. He examined March, with a certain mixture of respect and contempt, +upon the nature of the literary life, and how it differed from the life +of a journalist. He asked if he thought Burnamy would amount to anything +as a literary man; he so far assented to March's faith in him as to say, +"He's smart." He told of leaving his daughters in school at Wurzburg; +and upon the whole he moved March with a sense of his pathetic loneliness +without moving his liking, as he passed lumberingly on, dangling his cup. + +March gave his own cup to the little maid at his spring, and while she +gave it to a second, who dipped it and handed it to a third for its +return to him, he heard an unmistakable fellow-countryman saying good-, +morning to them all in English. "Are you going to teach them United +States?" he asked of a face with which he knew such an appeal would not +fail. + +"Well," the man admitted, "I try to teach them that much. They like it. +You are an American? I am glad of it. I have 'most lost the use of my +lungs, here. I'm a great talker, and I talk to my wife till she's about +dead; then I'm out of it for the rest of the day; I can't speak German." + +His manner was the free, friendly manner of the West. He must be that +sort of untravelled American whom March had so seldom met, but he was +afraid to ask him if this was his first time at Carlsbad, lest it should +prove the third or fourth. "Are you taking the cure?" he asked instead. + +"Oh, no. My wife is. She'll be along directly; I come down here and +drink the waters to encourage her; doctor said to. That gets me in for +the diet, too. I've e't more cooked fruit since I been here than I ever +did in my life before. Prunes? My Lord, I'm full o' prunes! Well, it +does me good to see an American, to know him. I couldn't 'a' told you, +it you hadn't have spoken." + +"Well," said March, "I shouldn't have been so sure of you, either, by +your looks." + +"Yes, we can't always tell ourselves from these Dutch. But they know us, +and they don't want us, except just for one thing, and that's our money. +I tell you, the Americans are the chumps over here. Soon's they got all +our money, or think they have, they say, "Here, you Americans, this is my +country; you get off; and we got to get. Ever been over before?" + +"A great while ago; so long that I can hardly believe it." + +"It's my first time. My name's Otterson: I'm from out in Iowa." + +March gave him his name, and added that he was from New York. + +"Yes. I thought you was Eastern. But that wasn't an Eastern man you was +just with?" + +"No; he's from Chicago. He's a Mr. Stoller." + +"Not the buggy man?" + +"I believe he makes buggies." + +"Well, you do meet everybody here." The Iowan was silent for a moment, +as if, hushed by the weighty thought. "I wish my wife could have seen +him. I just want her to see the man that made our buggy. I don't know +what's keeping her, this morning," he added, apologetically. "Look at +that fellow, will you, tryin' to get away from those women!" A young +officer was doing his best to take leave of two ladies, who seemed to be +mother and daughter; they detained him by their united arts, and clung to +him with caressing words and looks. He was red in the face with his +polite struggles when he broke from them at last. "How they do hang on +to a man, over here!" the Iowa man continued. "And the Americans are as +bad as any. Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place, +and our girls just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well, it's +so, Jenny," he said to the lady who had joined them and whom March turned +round to see when he spoke to her. "If I wanted a foreigner I should go +in for a man. And these officers! Put their mustaches up at night in +curl-papers, they tell me. Introduce you to Mrs. Otterson, Mr. March. +Well, had your first glass, yet, Jenny? I'm just going for my second +tumbler." + +He took his wife back to the spring, and began to tell her about Stoller; +she made no sign of caring for him; and March felt inculpated. She +relented a little toward him as they drank together; when he said he must +be going to breakfast with his wife, she asked where he breakfasted, and +said, "Why, we go to the Posthof, too." He answered that then they +should be sure some time to meet there; he did not venture further; he +reflected that Mrs. March had her reluctances too; she distrusted people +who had amused or interested him before she met them. + + + + +XXIX. + +Burnamy had found the Posthof for them, as he had found most of the other +agreeable things in Carlsbad, which he brought to their knowledge one by +one, with such forethought that March said he hoped he should be cared +for in his declining years as an editor rather than as a father; there +was no tenderness like a young contributor's. + +Many people from the hotels on the hill found at Pupp's just the time and +space between their last cup of water and their first cup of coffee which +are prescribed at Carlsbad; but the Marches were aware somehow from the +beginning that Pupp's had not the hold upon the world at breakfast which +it had at the mid-day dinner, or at supper on the evenings when the +concert was there. Still it was amusing, and they were patient of +Burnamy's delay till he could get a morning off from Stoller and go with +them to the Posthof. He met Mrs. March in the reading-room, where March +was to join them on his way from the springs with his bag of bread. The +earlier usage of buying the delicate pink slices of Westphalia ham, which +form the chief motive of a Carlsbad breakfast, at a certain shop in the +town, and carrying them to the cafe with you, is no longer of such +binding force as the custom of getting your bread at the Swiss bakery. +You choose it yourself at the counter, which begins to be crowded by half +past seven, and when you have collected the prescribed loaves into the +basket of metallic filigree given you by one of the baker's maids, she +puts it into a tissue-paper bag of a gay red color, and you join the +other invalids streaming away from the bakery, their paper bags making a +festive rustling as they go. + +Two roads lead out of the town into the lovely meadow-lands, a good mile +up the brawling Tepl, before they join on the right side of the torrent, +where the Posthof lurks nestled under trees whose boughs let the sun and +rain impartially through upon its army of little tables. By this time +the slow omnibus plying between Carlsbad and some villages in the valley +beyond has crossed from the left bank to the right, and keeps on past +half a dozen other cafes, where patients whose prescriptions marshal them +beyond the Posthof drop off by the dozens and scores. + +The road on the left bank of the Tepl is wild and overhung at points with +wooded steeps, when it leaves the town; but on the right it is bordered +with shops and restaurants a great part of its length. In leafy nooks +between these, uphill walks begin their climb of the mountains, from the +foot of votive shrines set round with tablets commemorating in German, +French, Russian, Hebrew, Magyar and Czech, the cure of high-well-borns of +all those races and languages. Booths glittering with the lapidary's +work in the cheaper gems, or full of the ingenious figures of the toy- +makers, alternate with the shrines and the cafes on the way to the +Posthof, and with their shoulders against the overhanging cliff, spread +for the passing crowd a lure of Viennese jewelry in garnets, opals, +amethysts, and the like, and of such Bohemian playthings as carrot-eating +rabbits, worsted-working cats, dancing-bears, and peacocks that strut +about the feet of the passers and expand their iridescent tails in mimic +pride. + +Burnamy got his charges with difficulty by the shrines in which they felt +the far-reflected charm of the crucifixes of the white-hot Italian +highways of their early travel, and by the toyshops where they had a +mechanical, out-dated impulse to get something for the children, ending +in a pang for the fact that they were children no longer. He waited +politely while Mrs. March made up her mind that she would not buy any +laces of the motherly old women who showed them under pent-roofs on way- +side tables; and he waited patiently at the gate of the flower-gardens +beyond the shops where March bought lavishly of sweetpease from the +businesslike flower-woman, and feigned a grateful joy in her because she +knew no English, and gave him a chance of speaking his German. + +"You'll find," he said, as they crossed the road again, "that it's well +to trifle a good deal; it makes the time pass. I should still be lagging +along in my thirties if it hadn't been for fooling, and here I am well on +in my fifties, and Mrs. March is younger than ever." + +They were at the gate of the garden and grounds of the cafe at last, and +a turn of the path brought them to the prospect of its tables, under the +trees, between the two long glazed galleries where the breakfasters take +refuge at other tables when it rains; it rains nearly always, and the +trunks of the trees are as green with damp as if painted; but that +morning the sun was shining. At the verge of the open space a group of +pretty serving-maids, each with her name on a silver band pinned upon her +breast, met them and bade them a 'Guten Morgen' of almost cheerful note, +but gave way, to an eager little smiling blonde, who came pushing down +the path at sight of Burnamy, and claimed him for her own. + +"Ah, Lili! We want an extra good table, this morning. These are some +American Excellencies, and you must do your best for them." + +"Oh, yes," the girl answered in English, after a radiant salutation of +the Marches; "I get you one." + +"You are a little more formerly, to-day, and I didn't had one already." + +She ran among the tables along the edge of the western edge of the +gallery, and was far beyond hearing his protest that he was not earlier +than usual when she beckoned him to the table she had found. She had +crowded it in between two belonging to other girls, and by the time her +breakfasters came up she was ready for their order, with the pouting +pretence that the girls always tried to rob her of the best places. +Burnamy explained proudly, when she went, that none of the other girls +ever got an advantage of her; she had more custom than any three of them, +and she had hired a man to help her carry her orders. The girls were all +from the neighboring villages, he said, and they lived at home in the +winter on their summer tips; their wages were nothing, or less, for +sometimes they paid for their places. + +"What a mass of information!" said March. "How did you come by it?" + +"Newspaper habit of interviewing the universe." + +"It's not a bad habit, if one doesn't carry it too far. How did Lili +learn her English?" + +"She takes lessons in the winter. She's a perfect little electric motor. +I don't believe any Yankee girl could equal her." + +"She would expect to marry a millionaire if she did. What astonishes one +over here is to see how contentedly people prosper along on their own +level. And the women do twice the work of the men without expecting to +equal them in any other way. At Pupp's, if we go to one end of the out- +door restaurant, it takes three men to wait on us: one to bring our +coffee or tea, another to bring our bread and meat, and another to make +out our bill, and I have to tip all three of them. If we go to the other +end, one girl serves us, and I have to give only one fee; I make it less +than the least I give any three of the men waiters." + +"You ought to be ashamed of that," said his wife. + +"I'm not. I'm simply proud of your sex, my dear." + +"Women do nearly everything, here," said Burnamy, impartially. "They +built that big new Kaiserbad building: mixed the mortar, carried the +hods, and laid the stone." + +"That makes me prouder of the sex than ever. But come, Mr. Burnamy! +Isn't there anybody of polite interest that you know of in this crowd?" + +"Well, I can't say," Burnamy hesitated. + +The breakfasters had been thronging into the grove and the galleries; the +tables were already filled, and men were bringing other tables on their +heads, and making places for them, with entreaties for pardon everywhere; +the proprietor was anxiously directing them; the pretty serving-girls +were running to and from the kitchen in a building apart with shrill, +sweet promises of haste. The morning sun fell broken through the leaves +on the gay hats and dresses of the ladies, and dappled the figures of the +men with harlequin patches of light and shade. A tall woman, with a sort +of sharpened beauty, and an artificial permanency of tint in her cheeks +and yellow hair, came trailing herself up the sun-shot path, and found, +with hardy insistence upon the publicity, places for the surly-looking, +down-faced young man behind her, and for her maid and her black poodle; +the dog was like the black poodle out of Faust. Burnamy had heard her +history; in fact, he had already roughed out a poem on it, which he +called Europa, not after the old fable, but because it seemed to him that +she expressed Europe, on one side of its civilization, and had an +authorized place in its order, as she would not have had in ours. She +was where she was by a toleration of certain social facts which +corresponds in Europe to our reverence for the vested interests. In her +history there, had been officers and bankers; even foreign dignitaries; +now there was this sullen young fellow . . . . Burnamy had wondered +if it would do to offer his poem to March, but the presence of the +original abashed him, and in his mind he had torn the poem up, with a +heartache for its aptness. + +"I don't believe," he said, "that I recognize-any celebrities here." + +"I'm sorry," said March. "Mrs. March would have been glad of some +Hoheits, some Grafs and Grafins, or a few Excellenzes, or even some mere +well-borns. But we must try to get along with the picturesqueness." + +"I'm satisfied with the picturesqueness," said his wife. "Don't worry +about me, Mr. Burnamy. "Why can't we have this sort of thing at home?" + +"We're getting something like it in the roof-gardens," said March." +We couldn't have it naturally because the climate is against it, with us. +At this time in the morning over there, the sun would be burning the life +out of the air, and the flies would be swarming on every table. At nine +A. M. the mosquitoes would be eating us up in such a grove as this. So +we have to use artifice, and lift our Posthof above the fly-line and the +mosquito-line into the night air. I haven't seen a fly since I came to +Europe. I really miss them; it makes me homesick." + +"There are plenty in Italy," his wife suggested. + +"We must get down there before we go home." + +"But why did nobody ever tell us that there were no flies in Germany? +Why did no traveller ever put it in his book? When your stewardess said +so on the steamer, I remember that you regarded it as a bluff." He +turned to Burnamy, who was listening with the deference of a contributor: +"Isn't Lili rather long? I mean for such a very prompt person. Oh, no!" + +But Burnamy got to his feet, and shouted "Fraulein!" to Lili; with her +hireling at her heels she was flying down a distant aisle between the +tables. She called back, with a face laughing over her shoulder, "In a +minute!" and vanished in the crowd. + +"Does that mean anything in particular? There's really no hurry." + +"Oh, I think she'll come now," said Burnamy. March protested that he had +only been amused at Lili's delay; but his wife scolded him for his +impatience; she begged Burnamy's pardon, and repeated civilities passed +between them. She asked if he did not think some of the young ladies +were pretty beyond the European average; a very few had style; the +mothers were mostly fat, and not stylish; it was well not to regard the +fathers too closely; several old gentlemen were clearing their throats +behind their newspapers, with noises that made her quail. There was no +one so effective as the Austrian officers, who put themselves a good deal +on show, bowing from their hips to favored groups; with the sun glinting +from their eyeglasses, and their hands pressing their sword-hilts, they +moved between the tables with the gait of tight-laced women. + +"They all wear corsets," Burnamy explained. + +"How much you know already!" said Mrs. March. "I can see that Europe +won't be lost on you in anything. Oh, who's that?" A lady whose costume +expressed saris at every point glided up the middle aisle of the grove +with a graceful tilt. Burnamy was silent. "She must be an American. Do +you know who she is?" + +"Yes." He hesitated, a little to name a woman whose tragedy had once +filled the newspapers. + +Mrs. March gazed after her with the fascination which such tragedies +inspire. "What grace! Is she beautiful?" + +"Very." Burnamy had not obtruded his knowledge, but somehow Mrs. March +did not like his knowing who she was, and how beautiful. She asked March +to look, but he refused. + +"Those things are too squalid," he said, and she liked him for saying it; +she hoped it would not be lost upon Burnamy. + +One of the waitresses tripped on the steps near them and flung the burden +off her tray on the stone floor before her; some of the dishes broke, and +the breakfast was lost. Tears came into the girl's eyes and rolled down +her hot cheeks. "There! That is what I call tragedy," said March. +"She'll have to pay for those things." + +"Oh, give her the money, dearest!" + +"How can I?" + +The girl had just got away with the ruin when Lili and her hireling +behind her came bearing down upon them with their three substantial +breakfasts on two well-laden trays. She forestalled Burnamy's reproaches +for her delay, laughing and bridling, while she set down the dishes of +ham and tongue and egg, and the little pots of coffee and frothed milk. + +"I could not so soon I wanted, because I was to serve an American +princess." + +Mrs. March started with proud conjecture of one of those noble +international marriages which fill our women with vainglory for such of +their compatriots as make them. + +"Oh, come now, Lili!" said Burnamy. "We have queens in America, but +nothing so low as princesses. This was a queen, wasn't it?" + +She referred the case to her hireling, who confirmed her. "All people +say it is princess," she insisted. + +"Well, if she's a princess we must look her up after breakfast," said +Burnamy. "Where is she sitting?" + +She pointed at a corner so far off on the other side that no one could be +distinguished, and then was gone, with a smile flashed over her shoulder, +and her hireling trying to keep up with her. + +"We're all very proud of Lili's having a hired man," said Burnamy. +"We think it reflects credit on her customers." + +March had begun his breakfast with-the voracious appetite of an early- +rising invalid. "What coffee!" + +He drew a long sigh after the first draught. + +"It's said to be made of burnt figs," said Burnamy, from the +inexhaustible advantage of his few days' priority in Carlsbad. + +"Then let's have burnt figs introduced at home as soon as possible. But +why burnt figs? That seems one of those doubts which are much more +difficult than faith." + +It's not only burnt figs," said Burnamy, with amiable superiority, "if it +is burnt figs, but it's made after a formula invented by a consensus of +physicians, and enforced by the municipality. Every cafe in Carlsbad +makes the same kind of coffee and charges the same price." + +"You are leaving us very little to find out for ourselves," sighed March. + +"Oh, I know a lot more things. Are you fond of fishing?" + +"Not very." + +"You can get a permit to catch trout in the Tepl, but they send an +official with you who keeps count, and when you have had your sport, the +trout belong to the municipality just as they did before you caught +them." + +"I don't see why that isn't a good notion: the last thing I should want +to do would be to eat a fish that I had caught, and that I was personally +acquainted with. Well, I'm never going away from Carlsbad. I don't +wonder people get their doctors to tell them to come back." + +Burnamy told them a number of facts he said Stoller had got together +about the place, and had given him to put in shape. It was run in the +interest of people who had got out of order, so that they would keep +coming to get themselves in order again; you could hardly buy an +unwholesome meal in the town; all the cooking was 'kurgemass'. He won +such favor with his facts that he could not stop in time: he said to +March, "But if you ever should have a fancy for a fish of your personal +acquaintance, there's a restaurant up the Tepl, where they let you pick +out your trout in the water; then they catch him and broil him for you, +and you know what you are eating." + +"Is it a municipal restaurant?" + +"Semi-municipal," said Burnamy, laughing. + +"We'll take Mrs. March," said her husband, and in her gravity Burnamy felt +the limitations of a woman's sense of humor, which always define +themselves for men so unexpectedly. + +He did what he could to get back into her good graces by telling her what +he knew about distinctions and dignities that he now saw among the +breakfasters. The crowd had now grown denser till the tables were set +together in such labyrinths that any one who left the central aisle was +lost in them. The serving-girls ran more swiftly to and fro, responding +with a more nervous shrillness to the calls of "Fraulein! Fraulein!" that +followed them. The proprietor, in his bare head, stood like one +paralyzed by his prosperity, which sent up all round him the clash of +knives and crockery, and the confusion of tongues. It was more than an +hour before Burnamy caught Lili's eye, and three times she promised to +come and be paid before she came. Then she said, "It is so nice, when +you stay a little," and when he told her of the poor Fraulein who had +broken the dishes in her fall near them, she almost wept with tenderness; +she almost winked with wickedness when he asked if the American princess +was still in her place. + +"Do go and see who it can be!" Mrs. March entreated. "We'll wait here," +and he obeyed. "I am not sure that I like him," she said, as soon as he +was out of hearing. "I don't know but he's coarse, after all. Do you +approve of his knowing so many people's 'taches' already?" + +"Would it be any better later?" he asked in tern. "He seemed to find you +interested." + +"It's very different with us; we're not young," she urged, only half +seriously. + +Her husband laughed. "I see you want me to defend him. Oh, hello!" +he cried, and she saw Burnamy coming toward them with a young lady, who +was nodding to them from as far as she could see them. "This is the easy +kind of thing that makes you Blush for the author if you find it in a +novel." + + + + +XXX. + +Mrs. March fairly took Miss Triscoe in her arms to kiss her. "Do you +know I felt it must be you, all the time! When did you come? Where is +your father? What hotel are you staying at?" + +It appeared, while Miss Triscoe was shaking hands with March, that it was +last night, and her father was finishing his breakfast, and it was one of +the hotels on the hill. On the way back to her father it appeared that +he wished to consult March's doctor; not that there was anything the +matter. + +The general himself was not much softened by the reunion with his fellow- +Americans; he confided to them that his coffee was poisonous; but he +seemed, standing up with the Paris-New York Chronicle folded in his hand, +to have drunk it all. Was March going off on his forenoon tramp? He +believed that was part of the treatment, which was probably all humbug, +though he thought of trying it, now he was there. He was told the walks +were fine; he looked at Burnamy as if he had been praising them, and +Burnamy said he had been wondering if March would not like to try a +mountain path back to his hotel; he said, not so sincerely, that he +thought Mrs. March would like it. + +"I shall like your account of it," she answered. "But I'll walk back on +a level, if you please." + +"Oh, yes," Miss Triscoe pleaded, "come with us!" + +She played a little comedy of meaning to go back with her father so +gracefully that Mrs. March herself could scarcely have told just where +the girl's real purpose of going with Burnamy began to be evident, or +just how she managed to make General Triscoe beg to have the pleasure of +seeing Mrs. March back to her hotel. + +March went with the young people across the meadow behind the Posthof and +up into the forest, which began at the base of the mountain. At first +they tried to keep him in the range of their talk; but he fell behind +more and more, and as the talk narrowed to themselves it was less and +less possible to include him in it. When it began to concern their +common appreciation of the Marches, they even tried to get out of his +hearing. + +"They're so young in their thoughts," said Burnamy, "and they seem as +much interested in everything as they could have been thirty years ago. +They belong to a time when the world was a good deal fresher than it is +now; don't you think? I mean, in the eighteen-sixties." + +"Oh, yes, I can see that." + +"I don't know why we shouldn't be born older in each generation than +people were in the last. Perhaps we are," he suggested. + +"I don't know how you mean," said the girl, keeping vigorously up with +him; she let him take the jacket she threw off, but she would not have +his hand at the little steeps where he wanted to give it. + +"I don't believe I can quite make it out myself. But fancy a man that +began to act at twenty, quite unconsciously of course, from the past +experience of the whole race--" + +"He would be rather a dreadful person, wouldn't he?" + +"Rather monstrous, yes," he owned, with a laugh. "But that's where the +psychological interest would come in." + +As if she did not feel the notion quite pleasant she turned from it. +"I suppose you've been writing all sorts of things since you came here." + +"Well, it hasn't been such a great while as it's seemed, and I've had Mr. +Stoller's psychological interests to look after." + +"Oh, yes! Do you like him?" + +"I don't know. He's a lump of honest selfishness. He isn't bad. You +know where to have him. He's simple, too." + +"You mean, like Mr. March?" + +"I didn't mean that; but why not? They're not of the same generation, +but Stoller isn't modern." + +"I'm very curious to see him," said the girl. + +"Do you want me to introduce him?" + +"You can introduce him to papa." + +They stopped and looked across the curve of the mounting path, down on +March, who had sunk on a way-side seat, and was mopping his forehead. He +saw them, and called up: "Don't wait for me. I'll join you, gradually." + +"I don't want to lose you," Burnamy called back, but he kept on with Miss +Triscoe. "I want to get the Hirschensprung in," he explained. "It's the +cliff where a hunted deer leaped down several hundred feet to get away +from an emperor who was after him." + +"Oh, yes. They have them everywhere." + +"Do they? Well, anyway, there's a noble view up there." + +There was no view on the way up. The Germans' notion of a woodland is +everywhere that of a dense forest such as their barbarous tribes +primevally herded in. It means the close-set stems of trees, with their +tops interwoven in a roof of boughs and leaves so densely that you may +walk dry through it almost as long as a German shower lasts. When the +sun shines there is a pleasant greenish light in the aisles, shot here +and there with the gold that trickles through. There is nothing of the +accident of an American wood in these forests, which have been watched +and weeded by man ever since they burst the soil. They remain nurseries, +but they have the charm which no human care can alienate. The smell of +their bark and their leaves, and of the moist, flowerless earth about +their roots, came to March where he sat rich with the memories of his +country-bred youth, and drugged all consciousness of his long life in +cities since, and made him a part of nature, with dulled interests and +dimmed perspectives, so that for the moment he had the enjoyment of +exemption from care. There was no wild life to penetrate his isolation; +no birds, not a squirrel, not an insect; an old man who had bidden him +good-morning, as he came up, kept fumbling at the path with his hoe, and +was less intrusive than if he had not been there. + +March thought of the impassioned existence of these young people playing +the inevitable comedy of hide and seek which the youth of the race has +played from the beginning of time. The other invalids who haunted the +forest, and passed up and down before him in fulfilment of their several +prescriptions, had a thin unreality in spite of the physical bulk that +prevailed among them, and they heightened the relief that the forest- +spirit brought him from the strenuous contact of that young drama. He +had been almost painfully aware that the persons in it had met, however +little they knew it, with an eagerness intensified by their brief +separation, and he fancied it was the girl who had unconsciously operated +their reunion in response to the young man's longing, her will making +itself electrically felt through space by that sort of wireless +telegraphy which love has long employed, and science has just begun to +imagine. + +He would have been willing that they should get home alone, but he knew +that his wife would require an account of them from him, and though he +could have invented something of the kind, if it came to the worst, he +was aware that it would not do for him to arrive without them. The +thought goaded him from his seat, and he joined the upward procession of +his fellow-sick, as it met another procession straggling downward; the +ways branched in all directions, with people on them everywhere, bent +upon building up in a month the health which they would spend the rest of +the year in demolishing. + +He came upon his charges unexpectedly at a turn of the path, and Miss +Triscoe told him that he ought to have been with them for the view from +the Hirschensprung. It was magnificent, she said, and she made Burnamy +corroborate her praise of it, and agree with her that it was worth the +climb a thousand times; he modestly accepted the credit she appeared +willing to give him, of inventing the Hirschensprung. + + + + +XXXI. + +Between his work for Stoller and what sometimes seemed the +obstructiveness of General Triscoe, Burnamy was not very much with Miss +Triscoe. He was not devout, but he went every Sunday to the pretty +English church on the hill, where he contributed beyond his means to the +support of the English clergy on the Continent, for the sake of looking +at her back hair during the service, and losing himself in the graceful +lines which defined, the girl's figure from the slant of her flowery hat +to the point where the pewtop crossed her elastic waist. One happy +morning the general did not come to church, and he had the fortune to +walk home with her to her pension, where she lingered with him a moment, +and almost made him believe she might be going to ask him to come in. + +The next evening, when he was sauntering down the row of glittering shops +beside the Tepl, with Mrs. March, they overtook the general and his +daughter at a place where the girl was admiring some stork-scissors in +the window; she said she wished she were still little, so that she could +get them. They walked home with the Triscoes, and then he hurried Mrs. +March back to the shop. The man had already put up his shutters, and was +just closing his door, but Burnamy pushed in, and asked to look at the +stork-scissors they had seen in the window. The gas was out, and the +shopman lighted a very dim candle, to show them. + +"I knew you wanted to get them for her, after what she said, Mrs. March," +he laughed, nervously, "and you must let me lend you the money." + +"Why, of course!" she answered, joyfully humoring his feint. "Shall I +put my card in for the man to send home to her with them?" + +"Well--no. No. Not your card--exactly. Or, yes! Yes, you must, I +suppose." + +They made the hushing street gay with their laughter; the next evening +Miss Triscoe came upon the Marches and Burnamy where they sat after +supper listening to the concert at Pupp's, and thanked Mrs. March for the +scissors. Then she and Burnamy had their laugh again, and Miss Triscoe +joined them, to her father's frowning mystification. He stared round for +a table; they were all taken, and he could not refuse the interest +Burnamy made with the waiters to bring them one and crowd it in. He had +to ask him to sup with them, and Burnamy sat down and heard the concert +through beside Miss Triscoe. + +"What is so tremendously amusing in a pair of stork-scissors?" March +demanded, when his wife and he were alone. + +"Why, I was wanting to tell you, dearest," she began, in a tone which he +felt to be wheedling, and she told the story of the scissors. + +"Look here, my dear! Didn't you promise to let this love-affair alone?" + +"That was on the ship. And besides, what would you have done, I should +like to know? Would you have refused to let him buy them for her?" +She added, carelessly, "He wants us to go to the Kurhaus ball with him." + +"Oh, does he!" + +"Yes. He says he knows that she can get her father to let her go if we +will chaperon them. And I promised that you would." + +"That I would?" + +"It will do just as well if you go. And it will be very amusing; you can +see something of Carlsbad society." + +"But I'm not going!" he declared. "It would interfere with my cure. The +sitting up late would be bad enough, but I should get very hungry, and I +should eat potato salad and sausages, and drink beer, and do all sorts of +unwholesome things." + +"Nonsense! The refreshments will be 'kurgemass', of course." + +"You can go yourself," he said. + +A ball is not the same thing for a woman after fifty as it is before +twenty, but still it has claims upon the imagination, and the novel +circumstance of a ball in the Kurhaus in Carlsbad enhanced these for Mrs. +March. It was the annual reunion which is given by municipal authority +in the large hall above the bathrooms; it is frequented with safety and +pleasure by curious strangers, and now, upon reflection, it began to have +for Mrs. March the charm of duty; she believed that she could finally +have made March go in her place, but she felt that she ought really to go +in his, and save him from the late hours and the late supper. + +"Very well, then," she said at last, "I will go." + +It appeared that any civil person might go to the reunion who chose to +pay two florins and a half. There must have been some sort of +restriction, and the ladies of Burnamy's party went with a good deal of +amused curiosity to see what the distinctions were; but they saw none +unless it was the advantages which the military had. The long hall over +the bathrooms shaped itself into a space for the dancing at one end, and +all the rest of it was filled with tables, which at half past eight were +crowded with people, eating, drinking, and smoking. The military enjoyed +the monopoly of a table next the rail dividing the dancing from the +dining space. There the tight-laced Herr Hauptmanns and Herr Lieutenants +sat at their sausage and beer and cigars in the intervals of the waltzes, +and strengthened themselves for a foray among the gracious Fraus and +Frauleins on the benches lining three sides of the dancing-space. From +the gallery above many civilian spectators looked down upon the gayety, +and the dress-coats of a few citizens figured among the uniforms. + +As the evening wore on some ladies of greater fashion found their way to +the dancing-floor, and toward ten o'clock it became rather crowded. A +party of American girls showed their Paris dresses in the transatlantic +versions of the waltz. At first they danced with the young men who came +with them; but after a while they yielded to the custom of the place, and +danced with any of the officers who asked them. + +"I know it's the custom," said Mrs. March to Miss Triscoe, who was at her +side in one of the waltzes she had decided to sit out, so as not to be +dancing all the time with Burnamy, "but I never can like it without an +introduction." + +"No," said the girl, with the air of putting temptation decidedly away, +"I don't believe papa would, either." + +A young officer came up, and drooped in mute supplication before her. +She glanced at Mrs. March, who turned her face away; and she excused +herself with the pretence that she had promised the dance, and by good +fortune, Burnamy, who had been unscrupulously waltzing with a lady he did +not know, came up at the moment. She rose and put her hand on his arm, +and they both bowed to the officer before they whirled away. The officer +looked after them with amiable admiration; then he turned to Mrs. March +with a light of banter in his friendly eyes, and was unmistakably asking +her to dance. She liked his ironical daring, she liked it so much that +she forgot her objection to partners without introductions; she forgot +her fifty-odd years; she forgot that she was a mother of grown children +and even a mother-in-law; she remembered only the step of her out-dated +waltz. + +It seemed to be modern enough for the cheerful young officer, and they +were suddenly revolving with the rest. . . A tide of long-forgotten +girlhood welled up in her heart, and she laughed as she floated off on it +past the astonished eyes of Miss Triscoe and Burnamy. She saw them +falter, as if they had lost their step in their astonishment; then they +seemed both to vanish, and her partner had released her, and was helping +Miss Triscoe up from the floor; Burnamy was brushing the dust from his +knees, and the citizen who had bowled them over was boisterously +apologizing and incessantly bowing. + +"Oh, are you hurt?" Mrs. March implored. "I'm sure you must be killed; +and I did it! I don't know, what I was thinking of!" + +The girl laughed. "I'm not hurt a bit!" + +They had one impulse to escape from the place, and from the sympathy and +congratulation. In the dressing-room she declared again that she was all +right. "How beautifully you waltz, Mrs. March!" she said, and she +laughed again, and would not agree with her that she had been ridiculous. +"But I'm glad those American girls didn't see me. And I can't be too +thankful papa didn't come!" + +Mrs. March's heart sank at the thought of what General Triscoe would +think of her. "You must tell him I did it. I can never lift up my +head!" + +"No, I shall not. No one did it," said the girl, magnanimously. She +looked down sidelong at her draperies. "I was so afraid I had torn my +dress! I certainly heard something rip." + +It was one of the skirts of Burnamy's coat, which he had caught into his +hand and held in place till he could escape to the men's dressing-room, +where he had it pinned up so skillfully that the damage was not suspected +by the ladies. He had banged his knee abominably too; but they did not +suspect that either, as he limped home on the air beside them, first to +Miss Triscoe's pension, and then to Mrs. March's hotel. + +It was quite eleven o'clock, which at Carlsbad is as late as three in the +morning anywhere else, when she let herself into her room. She decided +not to tell her husband, then; and even at breakfast, which they had at +the Posthof, she had not got to her confession, though she had told him +everything else about the ball, when the young officer with whom she had +danced passed between the tables near her. He caught her eye and bowed +with a smile of so much meaning that March asked, "Who's your pretty +young friend?" + +"Oh, that!" she answered carelessly. "That was one of the officers at +the ball," and she laughed. + +"You seem to be in the joke, too," he said. "What is it?" + +"Oh, something. I'll tell you some time. Or perhaps you'll find out." + +"I'm afraid you won't let me wait." + +"No, I won't," and now she told him. She had expected teasing, ridicule, +sarcasm, anything but the psychological interest mixed with a sort of +retrospective tenderness which he showed. "I wish I could have seen you; +I always thought you danced well." He added: "It seems that you need a +chaperon too." + +The next morning, after March and General Triscoe had started off upon +one of the hill climbs, the young people made her go with them for a walk +up the Tepl, as far as the cafe of the Freundschaftsaal. In the grounds +an artist in silhouettes was cutting out the likenesses of people who +supposed themselves to have profiles, and they begged Mrs. March to sit +for hers. It was so good that she insisted on Miss Triscoe's sitting in +turn, and then Burnamy. Then he had the inspiration to propose that they +should all three sit together, and it appeared that such a group was +within the scope of the silhouettist's art; he posed them in his little +bower, and while he was mounting the picture they took turns, at five +kreutzers each, in listening to American tunes played by his Edison +phonograph. + +Mrs. March felt that all this was weakening her moral fibre; but she +tried to draw the line at letting Burnamy keep the group. "Why not?" he +pleaded. + +"You oughtn't to ask," she returned. "You've no business to have Miss +Triscoe's picture, if you must know." + +"But you're there to chaperon us!" he persisted. + +He began to laugh, and they all laughed when she said, "You need a +chaperon who doesn't lose her head, in a silhouette." But it seemed +useless to hold out after that, and she heard herself asking, "Shall we +let him keep it, Miss Triscoe?" + +Burnamy went off to his work with Stoller, carrying the silhouette with +him, and she kept on with Miss Triscoe to her hotel. In turning from the +gate after she parted with the girl she found herself confronted with +Mrs. Adding and Rose. The ladies exclaimed at each other in an +astonishment from which they had to recover before they could begin to +talk, but from the first moment Mrs. March perceived that Mrs. Adding had +something to say. The more freely to say it she asked Mrs. March into +her hotel, which was in the same street with the pension of the Triscoes, +and she let her boy go off about the exploration of Carlsbad; he promised +to be back in an hour. + +"Well, now what scrape are you in?" March asked when his wife came home, +and began to put off her things, with signs of excitement which he could +not fail to note. He was lying down after a long tramp, and he seemed +very comfortable. + +His question suggested something of anterior import, and she told him +about the silhouettes, and the advantage the young people had taken of +their power over her through their knowledge of her foolish behavior at +the ball. + +He said, lazily: "They seem to be working you for all you're worth. Is +that it?" + +"No; there is something worse. Something's happened which throws all +that quite in the shade. Mrs. Adding is here." + +"Mrs. Adding?" he repeated, with a dimness for names which she would not +allow was growing on him. + +"Don't be stupid, dear! Mrs. Adding, who sat opposite Mr. Kenby on the +Norumbia. The mother of the nice boy." + +"Oh, yes! Well, that's good!" + +"No, it isn't! Don't say such a thing--till you know!" she cried, with a +certain shrillness which warned him of an unfathomed seriousness in the +fact. He sat up as if better to confront the mystery. "I have been at +her hotel, and she has been telling me that she's just come from Berlin, +and that Mr. Kenby's been there, and--Now I won't have you making a joke +of it, or breaking out about it, as if it were not a thing to be looked +for; though of course with the others on our hands you're not to blame +for not thinking of it. But you can see yourself that she's young and +good-looking. She did speak beautifully of her son, and if it were not +for him, I don't believe she would hesitate--" + +"For heaven's sake, what are you driving at?" March broke in, and she +answered him as vehemently: + +"He's asked her to marry him!" + +"Kenby? Mrs. Adding?" + +"Yes!" + +"Well, now, Isabel, this won't do! They ought to be ashamed of +themselves. With that morbid, sensitive boy! It's shocking--" + +"Will you listen? Or do you want me to stop?" He arrested himself at +her threat, and she resumed, after giving her contempt of his turbulence +time to sink in, "She refused him, of course!" + +"Oh, all right, then!" + +"You take it in such a way that I've a great mind not to tell you +anything more about it." + +"I know you have," he said, stretching himself out again; "but you'll do +it, all the same. You'd have been awfully disappointed if I had been +calm and collected." + +"She refused him," she began again, "although she respects him, because +she feels that she ought to devote herself to her son. Of course she's +very young, still; she was married when she was only nineteen to a man +twice her age, and she's not thirty-five yet. I don't think she ever +cared much for her husband; and she wants you to find out something about +him." + +"I never heard of him. I--" + +Mrs. March made a "tchck!" that would have recalled the most consequent +of men from the most logical and coherent interpretation to the true +intent of her words. He perceived his mistake, and said, resolutely: +"Well, I won't do it. If she's refused him, that's the end of it; she +needn't know anything about him, and she has no right to." + +"Now I think differently," said Mrs. March, with an inductive air. +"Of course she has to know about him, now." She stopped, and March +turned his head and looked expectantly at her. "He said he would not +consider her answer final, but would hope to see her again and--She's +afraid he may follow her--What are you looking at me so for?" + +"Is he coming here?" + +"Am I to blame if he is? He said he was going to write to her." + +March burst into a laugh. "Well, they haven't been beating about the +bush! When I think how Miss Triscoe has been pursuing Burnamy from the +first moment she set eyes on him, with the settled belief that she was +running from him, and he imagines that he has been boldly following her, +without the least hope from her, I can't help admiring the simple +directness of these elders." + +"And if Kenby wants to talk with you, what will you say?" she cut in +eagerly. + +"I'll say I don't like the subject. What am I in Carlsbad for? I came +for the cure, and I'm spending time and money on it. I might as well go +and take my three cups of Felsenquelle on a full stomach as to listen to +Kenby." + +"I know it's bad for you, and I wish we had never seen those people," +said Mrs. March. "I don't believe he'll want to talk with you; but if--" + +"Is Mrs. Adding in this hotel? I'm not going to have them round in my +bread-trough!" + +"She isn't. She's at one of the hotels on the hill." + +"Very well, let her stay there, then. They can manage their love-affairs +in their own way. The only one I care the least for is the boy." + +"Yes, it is forlorn for him. But he likes Mr. Kenby, and--No, it's +horrid, and you can't make it anything else!" + +"Well, I'm not trying to." He turned his face away. "I must get my nap, +now." After she thought he must have fallen asleep, he said, "The first +thing you know, those old Eltwins will be coming round and telling us +that they're going to get divorced." Then he really slept. + + + + +XXXII. + +The mid-day dinner at Pupp's was the time to see the Carlsbad world, and +the Marches had the habit of sitting long at table to watch it. + +There was one family in whom they fancied a sort of literary quality, as +if they had come out of some pleasant German story, but they never knew +anything about them. The father by his dress must have been a Protestant +clergyman; the mother had been a beauty and was still very handsome; the +daughter was good-looking, and of a good-breeding which was both girlish +and ladylike. They commended themselves by always taking the table +d'hote dinner, as the Marches did, and eating through from the soup and +the rank fresh-water fish to the sweet, upon the same principle: the +husband ate all the compote and gave the others his dessert, which was +not good for him. A young girl of a different fascination remained as +much a mystery. She was small and of an extreme tenuity, which became +more bewildering as she advanced through her meal, especially at supper, +which she made of a long cucumber pickle, a Frankfort sausage of twice +the pickle's length, and a towering goblet of beer; in her lap she held a +shivering little hound; she was in the decorous keeping of an elderly +maid, and had every effect of being a gracious Fraulein. A curious +contrast to her Teutonic voracity was the temperance of a young Latin +swell, imaginably from Trieste, who sat long over his small coffee and +cigarette, and tranquilly mused upon the pages of an Italian newspaper. +At another table there was a very noisy lady, short and fat, in flowing +draperies of white, who commanded a sallow family of South-Americans, and +loudly harangued them in South-American Spanish; she flared out in a +picture which nowhere lacked strong effects; and in her background lurked +a mysterious black face and figure, ironically subservient to the old +man, the mild boy, and the pretty young girl in the middle distance of +the family group. + +Amidst the shows of a hardened worldliness there were touching glimpses +of domesticity and heart: a young bride fed her husband soup from her own +plate with her spoon, unabashed by the publicity; a mother and her two +pretty daughters hung about a handsome officer, who must have been newly +betrothed to one of the girls; and, the whole family showed a helpless +fondness for him, which he did not despise, though he held it in check; +the girls dressed alike, and seemed to have for their whole change of +costume a difference from time to time in the color of their sleeves. +The Marches believed they had seen the growth of the romance which had +eventuated so happily; and they saw other romances which did not in any +wise eventuate. Carlsbad was evidently one of the great marriage marts +of middle Europe, where mothers brought their daughters to be admired, +and everywhere the flower of life was blooming for the hand of love. +It blew by on all the promenades in dresses and hats as pretty as they +could be bought or imagined; but it was chiefly at Pupp's that it +flourished. For the most part it seemed to flourish in vain, and to be +destined to be put by for another season to dream, bulblike, of the +coming summer in the quiet of Moldavian and Transylvanian homes. + +Perhaps it was oftener of fortunate effect than the spectators knew; but +for their own pleasure they would not have had their pang for it less; +and March objected to having a more explicit demand upon his sympathy. +"We could have managed," he said, at the close of their dinner, as he +looked compassionately round upon the parterre of young girls, "we could +have managed with Burnamy and Miss Triscoe; but to have Mrs. Adding and +Kenby launched upon us is too much. Of course I like Kenby, and if the +widow alone were concerned I would give him my blessing: a wife more or a +widow less is not going to disturb the equilibrium of the universe; +but--" He stopped, and then he went on: "Men and women are well enough. +They complement each other very agreeably, and they have very good times +together. But why should they get in love?--It is sure to make them +uncomfortable to themselves and annoying to others." He broke off, and +stared about him. "My dear, this is really charming--almost as charming +as the Posthof." The crowd spread from the open vestibule of the hotel +and the shelter of its branching pavilion roofs until it was dimmed in +the obscurity of the low grove across the way in an ultimate depth where +the musicians were giving the afternoon concert. Between its two +stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such +effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and +flowed in mingled rose and lilac, pink and yellow, and white and orange, +and all the middle tints of modern millinery. Above on one side were the +agreeable bulks of architecture, in the buff and gray of Carlsbad; and +far beyond on the other were the upland slopes, with villas and long +curves of country roads, belted in with miles of wall. "It would be +about as offensive to have a love-interest that one personally knew about +intruded here," he said, "as to have a two-spanner carriage driven +through this crowd. It ought to be forbidden by the municipality." + +Mrs. March listened with her ears, but not with her eyes, and she +answered: "See that handsome young Greek priest! Isn't he an +archimandrite? The portier said he was." + +"Then let him pass for an archimandrite. Now," he recurred to his +grievance again, dreamily, "I have got to take Papa Triscoe in hand, and +poison his mind against Burnamy, and I shall have to instil a few drops +of venomous suspicion against Kenby into the heart of poor little Rose +Adding. Oh;" he broke out, "they will spoil everything. They'll be with +us morning, noon, and night," and he went on to work the joke of repining +at his lot. The worst thing, he said, would be the lovers' pretence of +being interested in something besides themselves, which they were no more +capable of than so many lunatics. How could they care for pretty girls +playing tennis on an upland level, in the waning afternoon? Or a cartful +of peasant women stopping to cross themselves at a way-side shrine? Or a +whistling boy with holes in his trousers pausing from some wayside +raspberries to touch his hat and say good-morning? Or those preposterous +maidens sprinkling linen on the grass from watering-pots while the skies +were full of rain? Or that blacksmith shop where Peter the Great made a +horseshoe. Or the monument of the young warrior-poet Koerner, with a +gentle-looking girl and her mother reading and knitting on a bench before +it? These simple pleasures sufficed them, but what could lovers really +care for them? A peasant girl flung down on the grassy road-side, fast +asleep, while her yoke-fellow, the gray old dog, lay in his harness near +her with one drowsy eye half open for her and the other for the contents +of their cart; a boy chasing a red squirrel in the old upper town beyond +the Tepl, and enlisting the interest of all the neighbors; the negro +door-keeper at the Golden Shield who ought to have spoken our Southern +English, but who spoke bad German and was from Cairo; the sweet afternoon +stillness in the woods; the good German mothers crocheting at the Posthof +concerts. Burnamy as a young poet might hate felt the precious quality +of these things, if his senses had not been holden by Miss Triscoe; and +she might have felt it if only he had done so. But as it was it would be +lost upon their preoccupation; with Mrs. Adding and Kenby it would be +hopeless. + +A day or two after Mrs: March had met Mrs. Adding, she went with her +husband to revere a certain magnificent blackamoor whom be had discovered +at the entrance of one of the aristocratic hotels on the Schlossberg, +where he performed the function of a kind of caryatid, and looked, in the +black of his skin and the white of his flowing costume, like a colossal +figure carved in ebony and ivory. They took a roundabout way through a +street entirely of villa-pensions; every house in Carlsbad but one is a +pension if it is not n hotel; but these were of a sort of sentimental +prettiness; with each a little garden before it, and a bower with an iron +table in it for breakfasting and supping out-doors; and he said that they +would be the very places for bridal couples who wished to spend the +honey-moon in getting well of the wedding surfeit. She denounced him for +saying such a thing as that, and for his inconsistency in complaining of +lovers while he was willing to think of young married people. He +contended that there was a great difference in the sort of demand that +young married people made upon the interest of witnesses, and that they +were at least on their way to sanity; and before they agreed, they had +come to the hotel with the blackamoor at the door. While they lingered, +sharing the splendid creature's hospitable pleasure in the spectacle he +formed, they were aware of a carriage with liveried coachman and footman +at the steps of the hotel; the liveries were very quiet and +distinguished, and they learned that the equipage was waiting for the +Prince of Coburg, or the Princess of Montenegro, or Prince Henry of +Prussia; there were differing opinions among the twenty or thirty +bystanders. Mrs. March said she did not care which it was; and she was +patient of the denouement, which began to postpone itself with delicate +delays. After repeated agitations at the door among portiers, +proprietors, and waiters, whose fluttered spirits imparted their thrill +to the spectators, while the coachman and footman remained +sculpturesquely impassive in their places, the carriage moved aside and +let an energetic American lady and her family drive up to the steps. The +hotel people paid her a tempered devotion, but she marred the effect by +rushing out and sitting on a balcony to wait for the delaying royalties. +There began to be more promises of their early appearance; a footman got +down and placed himself at the carriage door; the coachman stiffened +himself on his box; then he relaxed; the footman drooped, and even +wandered aside. There came a moment when at some signal the carriage +drove quite away from the portal and waited near the gate of the +stableyard; it drove back, and the spectators redoubled their attention. +Nothing happened, and some of them dropped off. At last an indescribable +significance expressed itself in the official group at the door; a man in +a high hat and dresscoat hurried out; a footman hurried to meet him; they +spoke inaudibly together. The footman mounted to his place; the coachman +gathered up his reins and drove rapidly out of the hotel-yard, down the +street, round the corner, out of sight. The man in the tall hat and +dress-coat went in; the official group at the threshold dissolved; the +statue in ivory and ebony resumed its place; evidently the Hoheit of +Coburg, or Montenegro, or Prussia, was not going to take the air. + +"My dear, this is humiliating." + +"Not at all! I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Think how near we +came to seeing them!" + +"I shouldn't feel so shabby if we had seen them. But to hang round here +in this plebeian abeyance, and then to be defeated and defrauded at last! +I wonder how long this sort of thing is going on?" + +"What thing?" + +"This base subjection of the imagination to the Tom Foolery of the Ages." + +"I don't know what you mean. I'm sure it's very natural to want to see a +Prince." + +"Only too natural. It's so deeply founded in nature that after denying +royalty by word and deed for a hundred years, we Americans are hungrier +for it than anybody else. Perhaps we may come back to it!" + +"Nonsense!" + +They looked up at the Austrian flag on the tower of the hotel, languidly +curling and uncurling in the bland evening air, as it had over a thousand +years of stupid and selfish monarchy, while all the generous republics of +the Middle Ages had perished, and the commonwealths of later times had +passed like fever dreams. That dull, inglorious empire had antedated or +outlived Venice and Genoa, Florence and Siena, the England of Cromwell, +the Holland of the Stadtholders, and the France of many revolutions, and +all the fleeting democracies which sprang from these. + +March began to ask himself how his curiosity differed from that of the +Europeans about him; then he became aware that these had detached +themselves, and left him exposed to the presence of a fellow countryman. +It was Otterson, with Mrs. Otterson; he turned upon March with hilarious +recognition. "Hello! Most of the Americans in Carlsbad seem to be +hanging round here for a sight of these kings. Well, we don't have a +great many of 'em, and it's natural we shouldn't want to miss any. But +now, you Eastern fellows, you go to Europe every summer, and yet you +don't seem to get enough of 'em. Think it's human nature, or did it get +so ground into us in the old times that we can't get it out, no +difference what we say?" + +"That's very much what I've been asking myself," said March. "Perhaps +it's any kind of show. We'd wait nearly as long for the President to +come out, wouldn't we?" + +"I reckon we would. But we wouldn't for his nephew, or his second +cousin." + +"Well, they wouldn't be in the way of the succession." + +"I guess you're right." The Iowan seemed better satisfied with March's +philosophy than March felt himself, and he could not forbear adding: + +"But I don't, deny that we should wait for the President because he's a +kind of king too. I don't know that we shall ever get over wanting to +see kings of some kind. Or at least my wife won't. May I present you to +Mrs. March?" + +"Happy to meet you, Mrs. March," said the Iowan. "Introduce you to Mrs. +Otterson. I'm the fool in my family, and I know just how you feel about +a chance like this. I don't mean that you're--" + +They all laughed at the hopeless case, and Mrs. March said, with one of +her unexpected likings: "I understand, Mr. Otterson. And I would rather +be our kind of fool than the kind that pretends not to care for the sight +of a king." + +"Like you and me, Mrs. Otterson," said March. + +"Indeed, indeed," said the lady, "I'd like to see a king too, if it +didn't take all night. Good-evening," she said, turning her husband +about with her, as if she suspected a purpose of patronage in Mrs. March, +and was not going to have it. + +Otterson looked over his shoulder to explain, despairingly: "The trouble +with me is that when I do get a chance to talk English, there's such a +flow of language it carries me away, and I don't know just where I'm +landing." + + + + +XXXIII. + +There were several kings and their kindred at Carlsbad that summer. One +day the Duchess of Orleans drove over from Marienbad, attended by the +Duke on his bicycle. After luncheon, they reappeared for a moment before +mounting to her carriage with their Secretaries: two young French +gentlemen whose dress and bearing better satisfied Mrs. March's exacting +passion for an aristocratic air in their order. The Duke was fat and +fair, as a Bourbon should be, and the Duchess fatter, though not so fair, +as became a Hapsburg, but they were both more plebeian-looking than their +retainers, who were slender as well as young, and as perfectly appointed +as English tailors could imagine them. + +"It wouldn't do for the very highest sort of Highhotes," March declared, +"to look their own consequence personally; they have to leave that, like +everything else, to their inferiors." + +By a happy heterophemy of Mrs. March's the German Hoheit had now become +Highhote, which was so much more descriptive that they had permanently +adopted it, and found comfort to their republican pride in the mockery +which it poured upon the feudal structure of society. They applied it +with a certain compunction, however, to the King of Servia, who came a +few days after the Duke and Duchess: he was such a young King, and of +such a little country. They watched for him from the windows of the +reading-room, while the crowd outside stood six deep on the three sides +of the square before the hotel, and the two plain public carriages which +brought the King and his suite drew tamely up at the portal, where the +proprietor and some civic dignitaries received him. His moderated +approach, so little like that of royalty on the stage, to which Americans +are used, allowed Mrs. March to make sure of the pale, slight, +insignificant, amiable-looking youth in spectacles as the sovereign she +was ambuscading. Then no appeal to her principles could keep her from +peeping through the reading-room door into the rotunda, where the King +graciously but speedily dismissed the civic gentlemen and the proprietor, +and vanished into the elevator. She was destined to see him so often +afterwards that she scarcely took the trouble to time her dining and +supping by that of the simple potentate, who had his meals in one of the +public rooms, with three gentlemen of his suite, in sack-coats like +himself, after the informal manner of the place. + +Still another potentate, who happened that summer to be sojourning +abroad, in the interval of a successful rebellion, was at the opera one +night with some of his faithful followers. Burnamy had offered Mrs. +March, who supposed that he merely wanted her and her husband with him, +places in a box; but after she eagerly accepted, it seemed that he wished +her to advise him whether it would do to ask Miss Triscoe and her father +to join them. + +"Why not?" she returned, with an arching of the eyebrows. + +"Why," he said, "perhaps I had better make a clean breast of it." + +"Perhaps you had," she said, and they both laughed, though he laughed +with a knot between his eyes. + +"The fact is, you know, this isn't my treat, exactly. It's Mr. +Stoller's." At the surprise in her face he hurried on. "He's got back +his first letter in the paper, and he's so much pleased with the way he +reads in print, that he wants to celebrate." + +"Yes," said Mrs. March, non-committally. + +Burnamy laughed again. "But he's bashful, and he isn't sure that you +would all take it in the right way. He wants you as friends of mine; and +he hasn't quite the courage to ask you himself." + +This seemed to Mrs. March so far from bad that she said: "That's very +nice of him. Then he's satisfied with--with your help? I'm glad of +that." + +"Thank you. He's met the Triscoes, and he thought it would be pleasant +to you if they went, too." + +"Oh, certainly." + +"He thought," Burnamy went on, with the air of feeling his way, "that we +might all go to the opera, and then--then go for a little supper +afterwards at Schwarzkopf's." + +He named the only place in Carlsbad where yon can sup so late as ten +o'clock; as the opera begins at six, and is over at half past eight, none +but the wildest roisterers frequent the place. + +"Oh!" said Mrs. March. "I don't know how a late supper would agree with +my husband's cure. I should have to ask him." + +"We could make it very hygienic," Burnamy explained. + +In repeating his invitation she blamed Burnamy's uncandor so much that +March took his part, as perhaps she intended, and said, "Oh, nonsense," +and that he should like to go in for the whole thing; and General Triscoe +accepted as promptly for himself and his daughter. That made six people, +Burnamy counted up, and he feigned a decent regret that there was not +room for Mrs. Adding and her son; he would have liked to ask them. + +Mrs. March did not enjoy it so much as coming with her husband alone when +they took two florin seats in the orchestra for the comedy. The comedy +always began half an hour earlier than the opera, and they had a five- +o'clock supper at the Theatre-Cafe before they went, and they got to +sleep by nine o'clock; now they would be up till half past ten at least, +and that orgy at Schwarzkopf's might not be at all good for him. But +still she liked being there; and Miss Triscoe made her take the best +seat; Burnamy and Stoller made the older men take the other seats beside +the ladies, while they sat behind, or stood up, when they, wished to see, +as people do in the back of a box. Stoller was not much at ease in +evening dress, but he bore himself with a dignity which was not perhaps +so gloomy as it looked; Mrs. March thought him handsome in his way, and +required Miss Triscoe to admire him. As for Burnamy's beauty it was not +necessary to insist upon that; he had the distinction of slender youth; +and she liked to think that no Highhote there was of a more patrician +presence than this yet unprinted contributor to 'Every Other Week'. +He and Stoller seemed on perfect terms; or else in his joy he was able to +hide the uneasiness which she had fancied in him from the first time she +saw them together, and which had never been quite absent from his manner +in Stoller's presence. Her husband always denied that it existed, or if +it did that it was anything but Burnamy's effort to get on common ground +with an inferior whom fortune had put over him. + +The young fellow talked with Stoller, and tried to bring him into the +range of the general conversation. He leaned over the ladies, from time +to time, and pointed out the notables whom he saw in the house; she was +glad, for his sake, that he did not lean less over her than over Miss +Triscoe. He explained certain military figures in the boxes opposite, +and certain ladies of rank who did not look their rank; Miss Triscoe, to +Mrs. March's thinking, looked their united ranks, and more; her dress was +very simple, but of a touch which saved it from being insipidly girlish; +her beauty was dazzling. + +"Do you see that old fellow in the corner chair just behind the +orchestra?" asked Burnamy. "He's ninety-six years old, and he comes to +the theatre every night, and falls asleep as soon as the curtain rises, +and sleeps through till the end of the act." + +"How dear!" said the girl, leaning forward to fix the nonagenarian with +her glasses, while many other glasses converged upon her. "Oh, wouldn't +you like to know him, Mr. March?" + +"I should consider it a liberal education. They have brought these +things to a perfect system in Europe. There is nothing to make life pass +smoothly like inflexible constancy to an entirely simple custom. My +dear," he added to his wife, "I wish we'd seen this sage before. He'd +have helped us through a good many hours of unintelligible comedy. I'm +always coming as Burnamy's guest, after this." + +The young fellow swelled with pleasure in his triumph, and casting an eye +about the theatre to cap it, he caught sight of that other potentate. +He whispered joyfully, "Ah! We've got two kings here to-night," and he +indicated in a box of their tier just across from that where the King of +Servia sat, the well-known face of the King of New York. + +"He isn't bad-looking," said March, handing his glass to General Triscoe. +"I've not seen many kings in exile; a matter of a few Carlist princes and +ex-sovereign dukes, and the good Henry V. of France, once, when I was +staying a month in Venice; but I don't think they any of them looked the +part better. I suppose he has his dream of recurring power like the +rest." + +"Dream!" said General Triscoe with the glass at his eyes. "He's dead +sure of it." + +"Oh, you don't really mean that!" + +"I don't know why I should have changed my mind." + +"Then it's as if we were in the presence of Charles II. just before he +was called back to England, or Napoleon in the last moments of Elba. +It's better than that. The thing is almost unique; it's a new situation +in history. Here's a sovereign who has no recognized function, no legal +status, no objective existence. He has no sort of public being, except +in the affection of his subjects. It took an upheaval little short of an +earthquake to unseat him. His rule, as we understand it, was bad for all +classes; the poor suffered more than the rich; the people have now had +three years of self-government; and yet this wonderful man has such a +hold upon the masses that he is going home to win the cause of oppression +at the head of the oppressed. When he's in power again, he will be as +subjective as ever, with the power of civic life and death, and an +idolatrous following perfectly ruthless in the execution of his will." + +"We've only begun," said the general. "This kind of king is municipal, +now; but he's going to be national. And then, good-by, Republic!" + +"The only thing like it," March resumed, too incredulous of the evil +future to deny himself the aesthetic pleasure of the parallel, "is the +rise of the Medici in Florence, but even the Medici were not mere +manipulators of pulls; they had some sort of public office, with some +sort of legislated tenure of it. The King of New York is sovereign by +force of will alone, and he will reign in the voluntary submission of the +majority. Is our national dictator to be of the same nature and +quality?" + +"It would be the scientific evolution, wouldn't it?" + +The ladies listened with the perfunctory attention which women pay to any +sort of inquiry which is not personal. Stoller had scarcely spoken yet; +he now startled them all by demanding, with a sort of vindictive force, +"Why shouldn't he have the power, if they're willing to let him?" + +"Yes," said General Triscoe, with a tilt of his head towards March. +"That's what we must ask ourselves more and more." + +March leaned back in his chair, and looked up over his shoulder at +Stoller. "Well, I don't know. Do you think it's quite right for a man +to use an unjust power, even if others are willing that he should?" + +Stoller stopped with an air of bewilderment as if surprised on the point +of saying that he thought just this. He asked instead, "What's wrong +about it?" + +"Well, that's one of those things that have to be felt, I suppose. But +if a man came to you, and offered to be your slave for a certain +consideration--say a comfortable house, and a steady job, that wasn't too +hard--should you feel it morally right to accept the offer? I don't say +think it right, for there might be a kind of logic for it." + +Stoller seemed about to answer; he hesitated; and before he had made any +response, the curtain rose. + + + + +XXXIV. + +There are few prettier things than Carlsbad by night from one of the many +bridges which span the Tepl in its course through the town. If it is a +starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted firmament +in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the houses on +either side contribute a planetary splendor of their own. By nine +o'clock everything is hushed; not a wheel is heard at that dead hour; +the few feet shuffling stealthily through the Alte Wiese whisper a +caution of silence to those issuing with a less guarded tread from the +opera; the little bowers that overhang the stream are as dark and mute as +the restaurants across the way which serve meals in them by day; the +whole place is as forsaken as other cities at midnight. People get +quickly home to bed, or if they have a mind to snatch a belated joy, they +slip into the Theater-Cafe, where the sleepy Frauleins serve them, in an +exemplary drowse, with plates of cold ham and bottles of the gently +gaseous waters of Giesshubl. Few are of the bold badness which delights +in a supper at Schwarzkopf's, and even these are glad of the drawn +curtains which hide their orgy from the chance passer. + +The invalids of Burnamy's party kept together, strengthening themselves +in a mutual purpose not to be tempted to eat anything which was not +strictly 'kurgemass'. Mrs. March played upon the interest which each of +them felt in his own case so artfully that she kept them talking of their +cure, and left Burnamy and Miss Triscoe to a moment on the bridge, by +which they profited, while the others strolled on, to lean against the +parapet and watch the lights in the skies and the water, and be alone +together. The stream shone above and below, and found its way out of and +into the darkness under the successive bridges; the town climbed into the +night with lamp-lit windows here and there, till the woods of the hill- +sides darkened down to meet it, and fold it in an embrace from which some +white edifice showed palely in the farthest gloom. + +He tried to make her think they could see that great iron crucifix which +watches over it day and night from its piny cliff. He had a fancy for a +poem, very impressionistic, which should convey the notion of the +crucifix's vigil. He submitted it to her; and they remained talking till +the others had got out of sight and hearing; and she was letting him keep +the hand on her arm which he had put there to hold her from falling over +the parapet, when they were both startled by approaching steps, and a +voice calling, "Look here! Who's running this supper party, anyway?" + +His wife had detached March from her group for the mission, as soon as +she felt that the young people were abusing her kindness. They answered +him with hysterical laughter, and Burnamy said, "Why, it's Mr. Stoller's +treat, you know." + +At the restaurant, where the proprietor obsequiously met the party on the +threshold and bowed them into a pretty inner room, with a table set for +their supper, Stoller had gained courage to play the host openly. He +appointed General Triscoe to the chief seat; he would have put his +daughter next to him, if the girl had not insisted upon Mrs. March's +having the place, and going herself to sit next to March, whom she said +she had not been able to speak a word to the whole evening. But she did +not talk a great deal to him; he smiled to find how soon he dropped out +of the conversation, and Burnamy, from his greater remoteness across the +table, dropped into it. He really preferred the study of Stoller, whose +instinct of a greater worldly quality in the Triscoes interested him; +he could see him listening now to what General Triscoe was saying to Mrs. +March, and now to what Burnamy was saying to Miss Triscoe; his strong, +selfish face, as he turned it on the young people, expressed a mingled +grudge and greed that was very curious. + +Stoller's courage, which had come and gone at moments throughout, rose at +the end, and while they lingered at the table well on to the hour of ten, +he said, in the sort of helpless offence he had with Burnamy, "What's the +reason we can't all go out tomorrow to that old castle you was talking +about?" + +"To Engelhaus? I don't know any reason, as far as I'm concerned," +answered Burnamy; but he refused the initiative offered him, and Stoller +was obliged to ask March: + +"You heard about it?" + +"Yes." General Triscoe was listening, and March added for him, "It was +the hold of an old robber baron; Gustavus Adolphus knocked it down, and +it's very picturesque, I believe." + +"It sounds promising," said the general. "Where is it?" + +"Isn't to-morrow our mineral bath?" Mrs. March interposed between her +husband and temptation. + +"No; the day after. Why, it's about ten or twelve miles out on the old +postroad that Napoleon took for Prague." + +"Napoleon knew a good road when he saw it," said the general, and he +alone of the company lighted a cigar. He was decidedly in favor of the +excursion, and he arranged for it with Stoller, whom he had the effect of +using for his pleasure as if he were doing him a favor. They were six, +and two carriages would take them: a two-spanner for four, and a one- +spanner for two; they could start directly after dinners and get home in +time for supper. + +Stoller asserted himself to say: "That's all right, then. I want you to +be my guests, and I'll see about the carriages." He turned to Burnamy: +"Will you order them?" + +"Oh," said the young fellow, with a sort of dryness, "the portier will +get them." + +"I don't understand why General Triscoe was so willing to accept. +Surely, he can't like that man!" said Mrs. March to her husband in their +own room. + +"Oh, I fancy that wouldn't be essential. The general seems to me, +capable of letting even an enemy serve his turn. Why didn't you speak, +if you didn't want to go?" + +"Why didn't you?" + +"I wanted to go." + +"And I knew it wouldn't do to let Miss Triscoe go alone; I could see that +she wished to go." + +"Do you think Burnamy did?" + +"He seemed rather indifferent. And yet he must have realized that he +would be with Miss Triscoe the whole afternoon." + + + + +XXXV. + +If Burnamy and Miss Triscoe took the lead in the one-spanner, and the +others followed in the two-spanner, it was not from want of politeness on +the part of the young people in offering to give up their places to each +of their elders in turn. It would have been grotesque for either March +or Stoller to drive with the girl; for her father it was apparently no +question, after a glance at the more rigid uprightness of the seat in the +one-spanner; and he accepted the place beside Mrs. March on the back seat +of the two-spanner without demur. He asked her leave to smoke, and then +he scarcely spoke to her. But he talked to the two men in front of him +almost incessantly, haranguing them upon the inferiority of our +conditions and the futility of our hopes as a people, with the effect of +bewildering the cruder arrogance of Stoller, who could have got on with +Triscoe's contempt for the worthlessness of our working-classes, but did +not know what to do with his scorn of the vulgarity and venality of their +employers. He accused some of Stoller's most honored and envied +capitalists of being the source of our worst corruptions, and guiltier +than the voting-cattle whom they bought and sold. + +"I think we can get rid of the whole trouble if we go at it the right +way," Stoller said, diverging for the sake of the point he wished to +bring in. "I believe in having the government run on business +principles. They've got it here in Carlsbad, already, just the right +sort of thing, and it works. I been lookin' into it, and I got this +young man, yonder"--he twisted his hand in the direction of the one- +spanner! "to help me put it in shape. I believe it's going to make our +folks think, the best ones among them. Here!" He drew a newspaper out +of his pocket, folded to show two columns in their full length, and +handed it to Triscoe, who took it with no great eagerness, and began to +run his eye over it. "You tell me what you think of that. I've put it +out for a kind of a feeler. I got some money in that paper, and I just +thought I'd let our people see how a city can be managed on business +principles." + +He kept his eye eagerly upon Triscoe, as if to follow his thought while +he read, and keep him up to the work, and he ignored the Marches so +entirely that they began in self-defence to talk with each other. + +Their carriage had climbed from Carlsbad in long irregular curves to the +breezy upland where the great highroad to Prague ran through fields of +harvest. They had come by heights and slopes of forest, where the +serried stems of the tall firs showed brown and whitish-blue and grew +straight as stalks of grain; and now on either side the farms opened +under a sky of unwonted cloudlessness. Narrow strips of wheat and rye, +which the men were cutting with sickles, and the women in red bodices +were binding, alternated with ribands of yellowing oats and grass, and +breadths of beets and turnips, with now and then lengths of ploughed +land. In the meadows the peasants were piling their carts with heavy +rowen, the girls lifting the hay on the forks, and the men giving +themselves the lighter labor of ordering the load. From the upturned +earth, where there ought to have been troops of strutting crows, a few +sombre ravens rose. But they could not rob the scene of its gayety; it +smiled in the sunshine with colors which vividly followed the slope of +the land till they were dimmed in the forests on the far-off mountains. +Nearer and farther, the cottages and villages shone in the valleys, or +glimmered through the veils of the distant haze. Over all breathed the +keen pure air of the hills, with a sentiment of changeless eld, which +charmed March, back to his boyhood, where he lost the sense of his wife's +presence, and answered her vaguely. She talked contentedly on in the +monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men learn to resign +themselves. They were both roused from their vagary by the voice of +General Triscoe. He was handing back the folded newspaper to Stoller, +and saying, with a queer look at him over his glasses, "I should like to +see what your contemporaries have to say to all that." + +"Well, sir," Stoller returned, "maybe I'll have the chance to show you. +They got my instructions over there to send everything to me." + +Burnamy and Miss Triscoe gave little heed to the landscape as landscape. +They agreed that the human interest was the great thing on a landscape, +after all; but they ignored the peasants in the fields and meadows, who +were no more to them than the driver on the box, or the people in the +two-spanner behind. They were talking of the hero and heroine of a novel +they had both read, and he was saying, "I suppose you think he was justly +punished." + +"Punished?" she repeated. "Why, they got married, after all!" + +"Yes, but you could see that they were not going to be happy." + +"Then it seems to me that she was punished; too." + +"Well, yes; you might say that. The author couldn't help that." + +Miss Triscoe was silent a moment before she said: + +"I always thought the author was rather hard on the hero. The girl was +very exacting." + +"Why," said Burnamy, "I supposed that women hated anything like deception +in men too much to tolerate it at all. Of course, in this case, he +didn't deceive her; he let her deceive herself; but wasn't that worse?" + +"Yes, that was worse. She could have forgiven him for deceiving her." + +"Oh!" + +"He might have had to do that. She wouldn't have minded his fibbing +outright, so much, for then it wouldn't have seemed to come from his +nature. But if he just let her believe what wasn't true, and didn't say +a word to prevent her, of course it was worse. It showed something weak, +something cowardly in him." + +Burnamy gave a little cynical laugh. "I suppose it did. But don't you +think it's rather rough, expecting us to have all the kinds of courage?" + +"Yes, it is," she assented. "That is why I say she was too exacting. +But a man oughn't to defend him." + +Burnamy's laugh had more pleasure in it, now. "Another woman might?" + +"No. She might excuse him." + +He turned to look back at the two-spanner; it was rather far behind, and +he spoke to their driver bidding him go slowly till it caught up with +them. By the time it did so, they were so close to it that they could +distinguish the lines of its wandering and broken walls. Ever since they +had climbed from the wooded depths of the hills above Carlsbad to the +open plateau, it had shown itself in greater and greater detail. The +detached mound of rock on which it stood rose like an island in the midst +of the plain, and commanded the highways in every direction. + +"I believe," Burnamy broke out, with a bitterness apparently relevant to +the ruin alone, "that if you hadn't required any quarterings of nobility +from him, Stoller would have made a good sort of robber baron. He's a +robber baron by nature, now, and he wouldn't have any scruple in levying +tribute on us here in our one-spanner, if his castle was in good repair +and his crossbowmen were not on a strike. But they would be on a strike, +probably, and then he would lock them out, and employ none but non-union +crossbowmen." + +If Miss Triscoe understood that he arraigned the morality as well as the +civility of his employer, she did not take him more seriously than he +meant, apparently, for she smiled as she said, "I don't see how you can +have anything to do with him, if you feel so about him." + +"Oh," Burnamy replied in kind, "he buys my poverty and not my will. And +perhaps if I thought better of myself, I should respect him more." + +"Have you been doing something very wicked?" + +"What should you have to say to me, if I had?" he bantered. + +"Oh, I should have nothing at all to say to you," she mocked back. + +They turned a corner of the highway, and drove rattling through a village +street up a long slope to the rounded hill which it crowned. A church at +its base looked out upon an irregular square. + +A gaunt figure of a man, with a staring mask, which seemed to hide a +darkling mind within, came out of the church, and locked it behind him. +He proved to be the sacristan, and the keeper of all the village's claims +upon the visitors' interest; he mastered, after a moment, their wishes in +respect to the castle, and showed the path that led to it; at the top, he +said, they would find a custodian of the ruins who would admit them. + + + + +XXXVI. + +The, path to the castle slanted upward across the shoulder of the hill, +to a certain point, and there some rude stone steps mounted more +directly. Wilding lilac-bushes, as if from some forgotten garden, +bordered the ascent; the chickory opened its blue flower; the clean +bitter odor of vermouth rose from the trodden turf; but Nature spreads no +such lavish feast in wood or field in the Old World as she spoils us with +in the New; a few kinds, repeated again and again, seem to be all her +store, and man must make the most of them. Miss Triscoe seemed to find +flowers enough in the simple bouquet which Burnamy put together for her. +She took it, and then gave it back to him, that she might have both hands +for her skirt, and so did him two favors. + +A superannuated forester of the nobleman who owns the ruin opened a gate +for the party at the top, and levied a tax of thirty kreutzers each upon +them, for its maintenance. The castle, by his story, had descended from +robber sire to robber son, till Gustavus knocked it to pieces in the +sixteenth century; three hundred years later, the present owner restored +it; and now its broken walls and arches, built of rubble mixed with +brick, and neatly pointed up with cement, form a ruin satisfyingly +permanent. The walls were not of great extent, but such as they were +they enclosed several dungeons and a chapel, all underground, and a +cistern which once enabled the barons and their retainers to water their +wine in time of siege. + +From that height they could overlook the neighboring highways in every +direction, and could bring a merchant train to, with a shaft from a +crossbow, or a shot from an arquebuse, at pleasure. With General +Triscoe's leave, March praised the strategic strength of the unique +position, which he found expressive of the past, and yet suggestive of +the present. It was more a difference in method than anything else that +distinguished the levy of customs by the authorities then and now. What +was the essential difference, between taking tribute of travellers +passing on horseback, and collecting dues from travellers arriving by +steamer? They did not pay voluntarily in either case; but it might be +proof of progress that they no longer fought the customs officials. + +"Then you believe in free trade," said Stoller, severely. + +"No. I am just inquiring which is the best way of enforcing the tariff +laws." + +"I saw in the Paris Chronicle, last night," said Miss Triscoe, "that +people are kept on the docks now for hours, and ladies cry at the way +their things are tumbled over by the inspectors." + +"It's shocking," said Mrs. March, magisterially. + +"It seems to be a return to the scenes of feudal times," her husband +resumed. "But I'm glad the travellers make no resistance. I'm opposed +to private war as much as I am to free trade." + +"It all comes round to the same thing at last," said General Triscoe. +"Your precious humanity--" + +"Oh, I don't claim it exclusively," March protested. + +"Well, then, our precious humanity is like a man that has lost his road. +He thinks he is finding his way out, but he is merely rounding on his +course, and coming back to where he started." + +Stoller said, "I think we ought to make it so rough for them, over here, +that they will come to America and set up, if they can't stand the +duties." + +"Oh, we ought to make it rough for them anyway," March consented. + +If Stoller felt his irony, he did not know what to answer. He followed +with his eyes the manoeuvre by which Burnamy and Miss Triscoe eliminated +themselves from the discussion, and strayed off to another corner of the +ruin, where they sat down on the turf in the shadow of the wall; a thin, +upland breeze drew across them, but the sun was hot. The land fell away +from the height, and then rose again on every side in carpetlike fields +and in long curving bands, whose parallel colors passed unblended into +the distance. "I don't suppose," Burnamy said, "that life ever does much +better than this, do you? I feel like knocking on a piece of wood and +saying 'Unberufen.' I might knock on your bouquet; that's wood." + +"It would spoil the flowers," she said, looking down at them in her belt. +She looked up and their eyes met. + +"I wonder," he said, presently, "what makes us always have a feeling of +dread when we are happy?" + +"Do you have that, too?" she asked. + +"Yes. Perhaps it's because we know that change must come, and it must be +for the worse." + +"That must be it. I never thought of it before, though." + +"If we had got so far in science that we could predict psychological +weather, and could know twenty-four hours ahead when a warm wave of bliss +or a cold wave of misery was coming, and prepare for smiles and tears +beforehand--it may come to that." + +"I hope it won't. I'd rather not know when I was to be happy; it would +spoil the pleasure; and wouldn't be any compensation when it was the +other way." + +A shadow fell across them, and Burnamy glanced round to see Stoller +looking down at them, with a slant of the face that brought his aquiline +profile into relief. "Oh! Have a turf, Mr. Stoller?" he called gayly up +to him. + +"I guess we've seen about all there is," he answered. "Hadn't we better +be going?" He probably did not mean to be mandatory. + +"All right," said Burnamy, and he turned to speak to Miss Triscoe again +without further notice of him. + +They all descended to the church at the foot of the hill where the weird +sacristan was waiting to show them the cold, bare interior, and to +account for its newness with the fact that the old church had been burnt, +and this one built only a few years before. Then he locked the doors +after them, and ran forward to open against their coming the chapel of +the village cemetery, which they were to visit after they had fortified +themselves for it at the village cafe. + +They were served by a little hunch-back maid; and she told them who lived +in the chief house of the village. It was uncommonly pretty; where all +the houses were picturesque, and she spoke of it with respect as the +dwelling of a rich magistrate who was clearly the great man of the place. +March admired the cat which rubbed against her skirt while she stood and +talked, and she took his praises modestly for the cat; but they wrought +upon the envy, of her brother so that he ran off to the garden, and came +back with two fat, sleepy-eyed puppies which he held up, with an arm +across each of their stomachs, for the acclaim of the spectators. + +"Oh, give him something! "Mrs. March entreated. "He's such a dear." + +"No, no! I am not going to have my little hunchback and her cat outdone," +he refused; and then he was about to yield. + +"Hold on!" said Stoller, assuming the host. "I got the change." + +He gave the boy a few kreutzers, when Mrs. March had meant her husband to +reward his naivete with half a florin at least; but he seemed to feel +that he had now ingratiated himself with the ladies, and he put himself +in charge of them for the walk to the cemetery chapel; he made Miss +Triscoe let him carry her jacket when she found it warm. + +The chapel is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the Jesuit brother who +designed it, two or three centuries ago, indulged a devotional fancy in +the triangular form of the structure and the decorative details. +Everything is three-cornered; the whole chapel, to begin with, and then +the ark of the high altar in the middle of it, and each of the three +side-altars. The clumsy baroque taste of the architecture is a German +version of the impulse that was making Italy fantastic at the time; the +carving is coarse, and the color harsh and unsoftened by years, though it +is broken and obliterated in places. + +The sacristan said that the chapel was never used for anything but +funeral services, and he led the way out into the cemetery, where he +wished to display the sepultural devices. The graves here were planted +with flowers, and some were in a mourning of black pansies; but a space +fenced apart from the rest held a few neglected mounds, overgrown with +weeds and brambles: This space, he said, was for suicides; but to March +it was not so ghastly as the dapper grief of certain tombs in consecrated +ground where the stones had photographs of the dead on porcelain let into +them. One was the picture of a beautiful young woman, who had been the +wife of the local magnate; an eternal love was vowed to her in the +inscription, but now, the sacristan said, with nothing of irony, the +magnate was married again, and lived in that prettiest house of the +village. He seemed proud of the monument, as the thing worthiest the +attention of the strangers, and be led them with less apparent +hopefulness to the unfinished chapel representing a Gethsemane, with the +figure of Christ praying and his apostles sleeping. It is a subject much +celebrated in terra-cotta about Carlsbad, and it was not a novelty to his +party; still, from its surroundings, it had a fresh pathos, and March +tried to make him understand that they appreciated it. He knew that his +wife wished the poor man to think he had done them a great favor in +showing it; he had been touched with all the vain shows of grief in the +poor, ugly little place; most of all he had felt the exile of those who +had taken their own lives and were parted in death from the more patient +sufferers who had waited for God to take them. With a curious, unpainful +self-analysis he noted that the older members of the party, who in the +course of nature were so much nearer death, did not shrink from its +shows; but the young girl and the young man had not borne to look on +them, and had quickly escaped from the place, somewhere outside the gate. +Was it the beginning, the promise of that reconciliation with death which +nature brings to life at last, or was it merely the effect, or defect, of +ossified sensibilities, of toughened nerves? + +"That is all?" he asked of the spectral sacristan. + +"That is all," the man said, and March felt in his pocket for a coin +commensurate to the service he had done them; it ought to be something +handsome. + +"No, no," said Stoller, detecting his gesture. "Your money a'n't good." + +He put twenty or thirty kreutzers into the hand of the man, who regarded +them with a disappointment none the less cruel because it was so patient. +In France, he would have been insolent; in Italy, he would have frankly +said it was too little; here, he merely looked at the money and whispered +a sad "Danke." + +Burnamy and Miss Triscoe rose from the grassy bank outside where they +were sitting, and waited for the elders to get into their two-spanner. + +"Oh, have I lost my glove in there?" said Mrs. March, looking at her +hands and such parts of her dress as a glove might cling to. + +"Let me go and find it for you," Burnamy entreated. + +"Well," she consented, and she added, "If the sacristan has found it, +give him something for me something really handsome, poor fellow." + +As Burnamy passed her, she let him see that she had both her gloves, and +her heart yearned upon him for his instant smile of intelligence: some +men would have blundered out that she had the lost glove in her hand. He +came back directly, saying, "No, he didn't find it." + +She laughed, and held both gloves up. "No wonder! I had it all the +time. Thank you ever so much." + +"How are we going to ride back?" asked Stoller. + +Burnamy almost turned pale; Miss Triscoe smiled impenetrably. No one +else spoke, and Mrs. March said, with placid authority, "Oh, I think the +way we came, is best." + +"Did that absurd creature," she apostrophized her husband as soon as she +got him alone after their arrival at Pupp's, "think I was going to let +him drive back with Agatha?" + +"I wonder," said March, "if that's what Burnamy calls her now?" + +"I shall despise him if it isn't." + + + + +XXXVII. + +Burnamy took up his mail to Stoller after the supper which they had eaten +in a silence natural with two men who have been off on a picnic together. +He did not rise from his writing-desk when Burnamy came in, and the young +man did not sit down after putting his letters before him. He said, with +an effort of forcing himself to speak at once, "I have looked through the +papers, and there is something that I think you ought to see." + +"What do you mean?" said Stoller. + +Burnamy laid down three or four papers opened to pages where certain +articles were strongly circumscribed in ink. The papers varied, but +their editorials did not, in purport at least. Some were grave and some +were gay; one indignantly denounced; another affected an ironical +bewilderment; the third simply had fun with the Hon. Jacob Stoller. +They all, however, treated his letter on the city government of Carlsbad +as the praise of municipal socialism, and the paper which had fun with +him gleefully congratulated the dangerous classes on the accession of the +Honorable Jacob to their ranks. + +Stoller read the articles, one after another, with parted lips and +gathering drops of perspiration on his upper lip, while Burnamy waited on +foot. He flung the papers all down at last. "Why, they're a pack of +fools! They don't know what they're talking about! I want city +government carried on on business principles, by the people, for the +people. I don't care what they say! I know I'm right, and I'm going +ahead on this line if it takes all--" The note of defiance died out of +his voice at the sight of Burnamy's pale face. "What's the matter with +you?" + +"There's nothing the matter with me." + +"Do you mean to tell me it is"--he could not bring himself to use the +word--"what they say?" + +"I suppose," said Burnamy, with a dry mouth, "it's what you may call +municipal socialism." + +Stoller jumped from his seat. "And you knew it when you let me do it?" + +"I supposed you knew what you were about." + +"It's a lie!" Stoller advanced upon him, wildly, and Burnamy took a step +backward. + +"Look out!" shouted Burnamy. "You never asked me anything about it. +You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you +were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were +talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. +You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money +than you expected to spend." + +Stoller started as if the word money reminded him of something. "I can +take care of myself, young man. How much do I owe you?" + +"Nothing!" said Burnamy, with an effort for grandeur which failed him. + +The next morning as the Marches sat over their coffee at the Posthof, he +came dragging himself toward them with such a haggard air that Mrs. March +called, before he reached their table, "Why, Mr. Burnamy, what's the +matter?" + +He smiled miserably. "Oh, I haven't slept very well. May I have my +coffee with you? I want to tell you something; I want you to make me. +But I can't speak till the coffee comes. Fraulein!" he besought a +waitress going off with a tray near them. "Tell Lili, please, to bring +me some coffee--only coffee." + +He tried to make some talk about the weather, which was rainy, and the +Marches helped him, but the poor endeavor lagged wretchedly in the +interval between the ordering and the coming of the coffee. "Ah, thank +you, Lili," he said, with a humility which confirmed Mrs. March in her +instant belief that he had been offering himself to Miss Triscoe and been +rejected. After gulping his coffee, he turned to her: "I want to say +good-by. I'm going away." + +"From Carlsbad?" asked Mrs. March with a keen distress. + +The water came into his eyes. "Don't, don't be good to me, Mrs. March! +I can't stand it. But you won't, when you know." + +He began to speak of Stoller, first to her, but addressing himself more +and more to the intelligence of March, who let him go on without +question, and laid a restraining hand upon his wife when he saw her about +to prompt him. At the end, "That's all," he said, huskily, and then he +seemed to be waiting for March's comment. He made none, and the young +fellow was forced to ask, "Well, what do you think, Mr. March?" + +"What do you think yourself?" + +"I think, I behaved badly," said Burnamy, and a movement of protest from +Mrs. March nerved him to add: "I could make out that it was not my +business to tell him what he was doing; but I guess it was; I guess I +ought to have stopped him, or given him a chance to stop himself. I +suppose I might have done it, if he had treated me decently when I turned +up a day late, here; or hadn't acted toward me as if I were a hand in his +buggy-works that had come in an hour after the whistle sounded." + +He set his teeth, and an indignant sympathy shone in Mrs. March's eyes; +but her husband only looked the more serious. + +He asked gently, "Do you offer that fact as an explanation, or as a +justification." + +Burnamy laughed forlornly. "It certainly wouldn't justify me. You might +say that it made the case all the worse for me." March forbore to say, +and Burnamy went on. "But I didn't suppose they would be onto him so +quick, or perhaps at all. I thought--if I thought anything--that it +would amuse some of the fellows in the office, who know about those +things." He paused, and in March's continued silence he went on. "The +chance was one in a hundred that anybody else would know where he had +brought up." + +"But you let him take that chance," March suggested. + +"Yes, I let him take it. Oh, you know how mixed all these things are!" + +"Yes." + +Of course I didn't think it out at the time. But I don't deny that I had +a satisfaction in the notion of the hornets' nest he was poking his thick +head into. It makes me sick, now, to think I had. I oughtn't to have +let him; he was perfectly innocent in it. After the letter went, +I wanted to tell him, but I couldn't; and then I took the chances too. +I don't believe be could have ever got forward in politics; he's too +honest--or he isn't dishonest in the right way. But that doesn't let me +out. I don't defend myself! I did wrong; I behaved badly. But I've +suffered for it. + +I've had a foreboding all the time that it would come to the worst, and +felt like a murderer with his victim when I've been alone with Stoller. +When I could get away from him I could shake it off, and even believe +that it hadn't happened. You can't think what a nightmare it's been! +Well, I've ruined Stoller politically, but I've ruined myself, too. I've +spoiled my own life; I've done what I can never explain to--to the people +I want to have believe in me; I've got to steal away like the thief I am. +Good-by!" He jumped to his feet, and put out his hand to March, and then +to Mrs. March. + +"Why, you're not going away now!" she cried, in a daze. + +"Yes, I am. I shall leave Carlsbad on the eleven-o'clock train. I don't +think I shall see you again." He clung to her hand. "If you see General +Triscoe--I wish you'd tell them I couldn't--that I had to--that I was +called away suddenly--Good-by!" He pressed her hand and dropped it, and +mixed with the crowd. Then he came suddenly back, with a final appeal to +March: "Should you--do you think I ought to see Stoller, and--and tell +him I don't think I used him fairly?" + +"You ought to know--" March began. + +But before he could say more, Burnamy said, "You're right," and was off +again. + +"Oh, how hard you were with him, my dear!" Mrs. March lamented. + +"I wish," he said, "if our boy ever went wrong that some one would be as +true to him as I was to that poor fellow. He condemned himself; and he +was right; he has behaved very badly." + +"You always overdo things so, when you act righteously!" + +"Now, Isabel!" + +"Oh, yes, I know what you will say. But I should have tempered justice +with mercy." + +Her nerves tingled with pity for Burnamy, but in her heart she was glad +that her husband had had strength to side with him against himself, and +she was proud of the forbearance with which he had done it. In their +earlier married life she would have confidently taken the initiative on +all moral questions. She still believed that she was better fitted for +their decision by her Puritan tradition and her New England birth, but +once in a great crisis when it seemed a question of their living, she had +weakened before it, and he, with no such advantages, had somehow met the +issue with courage and conscience. She could not believe he did so by +inspiration, but she had since let him take the brunt of all such issues +and the responsibility. He made no reply, and she said: "I suppose +you'll admit now there was always something peculiar in the poor boy's +manner to Stoller." + +He would confess no more than that there ought to have been. "I don't +see how he could stagger through with that load on his conscience. +I'm not sure I like his being able to do so." + +She was silent in the misgiving which she shared with him, but she said: +"I wonder how far it has gone with him and Miss Triscoe?" + +"Well, from his wanting you to give his message to the general in the +plural--" + +"Don't laugh! It's wicked to laugh! It's heartless!" she cried, +hysterically. "What will he do, poor fellow?" + +"I've an idea that he will light on his feet, somehow. But, at any rate, +he's doing the right thing in going to own up to Stoller." + +"Oh, Stoller! I care nothing for Stoller! Don't speak to me of +Stoller!" + +Burnamy fond the Bird of Prey, as he no longer had the heart to call him, +walking up and down in his room like an eagle caught in a trap. He +erected his crest fiercely enough, though, when the young fellow came in +at his loudly shouted, "Herein!" + +"What do you want?" he demanded, brutally. + +This simplified Burnamy's task, while it made it more loathsome. He +answered not much less brutally, "I want to tell you that I think I used +you badly, that I let you betray yourself, that I feel myself to blame." +He could have added, "Curse you!" without change of tone. + +Stoller sneered in a derision that showed his lower teeth like a dog's +when he snarls. "You want to get back!" + +"No," said Burnamy, mildly, and with increasing sadness as he spoke. +"I don't want to get back. Nothing would induce me. I'm going away on +the first train." + +"Well, you're not!" shouted Stoller. "You've lied me into this--" + +"Look out!" Burnamy turned white. + +"Didn't you lie me into it, if you let me fool myself, as you say?" +Stoller pursued, and Burnamy felt himself weaken through his wrath. +"Well, then, you got to lie me out of it. I been going over the damn +thing, all night--and you can do it for me. I know you can do it," he +gave way in a plea that was almost a whimper. "Look here! You see if +you can't. I'll make it all right with you. I'll pay you whatever you +think is right--whatever you say." + +"Oh!" said Burnamy, in otherwise unutterable disgust. + +"You kin," Stoller went on, breaking down more and more into his adopted +Hoosier, in the stress of his anxiety. "I know you kin, Mr. Burnamy." +He pushed the paper containing his letter into Burnamy's hands, and +pointed out a succession of marked passages. "There! And here! And +this place! Don't you see how you could make out that it meant something +else, or was just ironical?" He went on to prove how the text might be +given the complexion he wished, and Burnamy saw that he had really +thought it not impossibly out. "I can't put it in writing as well as +you; but I've done all the work, and all you've got to do is to give it +some of them turns of yours. I'll cable the fellows in our office to say +I've been misrepresented, and that my correction is coming. We'll get it +into shape here together, and then I'll cable that. I don't care for the +money. And I'll get our counting-room to see this scoundrel"--he picked +up the paper that had had fun with him--"and fix him all right, so that +he'll ask for a suspension of public opinion, and--You see, don't you?" + +The thing did appeal to Burnamy. If it could be done, it would enable +him to make Stoller the reparation he longed to make him more than +anything else in the world. But he heard himself saying, very gently, +almost tenderly, "It might be done, Mr. Stoller. But I couldn't do it. +It wouldn't be honest--for me." + +"Yah!" yelled Stoller, and he crushed the paper into a wad and flung it +into Burnamy's face. "Honest, you damn humbug! You let me in for this, +when you knew I didn't mean it, and now you won't help me out because it +a'n't honest! Get out of my room, and get out quick before I--" + +He hurled himself toward Burnamy, who straightened himself, with "If you +dare! "He knew that he was right in refusing; but he knew that Stoller +was right, too, and that he had not meant the logic of what he had said +in his letter, and of what Burnamy had let him imply. He braved +Stoller's onset, and he left his presence untouched, but feeling as +little a moral hero as he well could. + + + + +XXXVIII. + +General Triscoe woke in the bad humor of an elderly man after a day's +pleasure, and in the self-reproach of a pessimist who has lost his point +of view for a time, and has to work back to it. He began at the belated +breakfast with his daughter when she said, after kissing him gayly, in +the small two-seated bower where they breakfasted at their hotel when +they did not go to the Posthof, "Didn't you have a nice time, yesterday, +papa?" + +She sank into the chair opposite, and beamed at him across the little +iron table, as she lifted the pot to pour out his coffee. + +"What do you call a nice time?" he temporized, not quite able to resist +her gayety. + +"Well, the kind of time I had." + +"Did you get rheumatism from sitting on the grass? I took cold in that +old church, and the tea at that restaurant must have been brewed in a +brass kettle. I suffered all night from it. And that ass from +Illinois--" + +"Oh, poor papa! I couldn't go with Mr. Stoller alone, but I might have +gone in the two-spanner with him and let you have Mr. or Mrs. March in +the one-spanner." + +"I don't know. Their interest in each other isn't so interesting to +other people as they seem to think." + +"Do you feel that way really, papa? Don't you like their being so much +in love still?" + +"At their time of life? Thank you it's bad enough in young people." + +The girl did not answer; she appeared altogether occupied in pouring out +her father's coffee. + +He tasted it, and then he drank pretty well all of it; but he said, as he +put his cup down, "I don't know what they make this stuff of. I wish I +had a cup of good, honest American coffee." + +"Oh, there's nothing like American food!" said his daughter, with so much +conciliation that he looked up sharply. + +But whatever he might have been going to say was at least postponed by +the approach of a serving-maid, who brought a note to his daughter. She +blushed a little at sight of it, and then tore it open and read: + +"I am going away from Carlsbad, for a fault of my own which forbids me to +look you in the face. If you wish to know the worst of me, ask Mrs. +March. I have no heart to tell you." + +Agatha read these mystifying words of Burnamy's several times over in a +silent absorption with them which left her father to look after himself, +and he had poured out a second cup of coffee with his own hand, and was +reaching for the bread beside her before she came slowly back to a sense +of his presence. + +"Oh, excuse me, papa," she said, and she gave him the butter. "Here's a +very strange letter from Mr. Burnamy, which I think you'd better see." +She held the note across the table to him, and watched his face as he +read it. + +After he had read it twice, he turned the sheet over, as people do with +letters that puzzle them, in the vain hope of something explanatory on +the back. Then he looked up and asked: "What do you suppose he's been +doing?" + +"I don't believe he's been doing anything. It's something that Mr. +Stoller's been doing to him." + +"I shouldn't infer that from his own words. What makes you think the +trouble is with Stoller?" + +"He said--he said yesterday--something about being glad to be through +with him, because he disliked him so much he was always afraid of +wronging him. And that proves that now Mr. Stoller has made him believe +that he's done wrong, and has worked upon him till he does believe it." + +"It proves nothing of the kind," said the general, recurring to the note. +After reading it again, he looked keenly at her: "Am I to understand that +you have given him the right to suppose you would want to know the worst +--or the best of him?" + +The girl's eyes fell, and she pushed her knife against her plate. She +began: "No--" + +"Then confound his impudence!" the general broke out. "What business +has he to write to you at all about this?" + +"Because he couldn't go away without it!" she returned; and she met her +father's eye courageously. "He had a right to think we were his friends; +and if he has done wrong, or is in disgrace any way, isn't it manly of +him to wish to tell us first himself?" + +Her father could not say that it was not. But he could and did say, very +sceptically: "Stuff! Now, see here, Agatha: what are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to see Mrs. March, and then--" + +"You mustn't do anything of the kind, my dear," said her father, gently. +"You've no right to give yourself away to that romantic old goose." He +put up his hand to interrupt her protest. "This thing has got to be gone +to the bottom of. But you're not to do it. I will see March myself. We +must consider your dignity in this matter--and mine. And you may as well +understand that I'm not going to have any nonsense. It's got to be +managed so that it can't be supposed we're anxious about it, one way or +the other, or that he was authorized to write to you in this way--" + +"No, no! He oughtn't to have done so. He was to blame. He couldn't +have written to you, though, papa--" + +"Well, I don't know why. But that's no reason why we should let it be +understood that he has written to you. I will see March; and I will +manage to see his wife, too. I shall probably find them in the reading- +room at Pupp's, and--" + +The Marches were in fact just coming in from their breakfast at the +Posthof, and he met them at the door of Pupp's, where they all sat down +on one of the iron settees of the piazza, and began to ask one another +questions of their minds about the pleasure of the day before, and to +beat about the bush where Burnamy lurked in their common consciousness. + +Mrs. March was not able to keep long from starting him. "You knew," she +said, "that Mr. Burnamy had left us?" + +"Left! Why?" asked the general. + +She was a woman of resource, but in a case like this she found it best to +trust her husband's poverty of invention. She looked at him, and he +answered for her with a promptness that made her quake at first, but +finally seemed the only thing, if not the best thing: "He's had some +trouble with Stoller." He went on to tell the general just what the +trouble was. + +At the end the general grunted as from an uncertain mind. "You think +he's behaved badly." + +"I think he's behaved foolishly--youthfully. But I can understand how +strongly he was tempted. He could say that he was not authorized to stop +Stoller in his mad career." + +At this Mrs. March put her hand through her husband's arm. + +"I'm not so sure about that," said the general. + +March added: "Since I saw him this morning, I've heard something that +disposes me to look at his performance in a friendlier light. It's +something that Stoller told me himself; to heighten my sense of Burnamy's +wickedness. He seems to have felt that I ought to know what a serpent I +was cherishing in my bosom," and he gave Triscoe the facts of Burnamy's +injurious refusal to help Stoller put a false complexion on the opinions +he had allowed him ignorantly to express. + +The general grunted again. "Of course he had to refuse, and he has +behaved like a gentleman so far. But that doesn't justify him in having +let Stoller get himself into the scrape." + +"No," said March. "It's a tough nut for the casuist to try his tooth on. +And I must say I feel sorry for Stoller." + +Mrs. March plucked her hand from his arm. "I don't, one bit. He was +thoroughly selfish from first to last. He has got just what he +deserved." + +"Ah, very likely," said her husband. "The question is about Burnamy's +part in giving him his deserts; he had to leave him to them, of course." + +The general fixed her with the impenetrable glitter of his eye-glasses, +and left the subject as of no concern to him. "I believe," he said, +rising, "I'll have a look at some of your papers," and he went into the +reading-room. + +"Now," said Mrs. March, "he will go home and poison that poor girl's +mind. And, you will have yourself to thank for prejudicing him against +Burnamy." + +"Then why didn't you do it yourself, my dear?" he teased; but he was +really too sorry for the whole affair, which he nevertheless enjoyed as +an ethical problem. + +The general looked so little at the papers that before March went off for +his morning walk he saw him come out of the reading-room and take his way +down the Alte Wiese. He went directly back to his daughter, and reported +Burnamy's behavior with entire exactness. He dwelt upon his making the +best of a bad business in refusing to help Stoller out of it, +dishonorably and mendaciously; but he did not conceal that it was a bad +business. + +"Now, you know all about it," he said at the end, "and I leave the whole +thing to you. If you prefer, you can see Mrs. March. I don't know but +I'd rather you'd satisfy yourself--" + +"I will not see Mrs. March. Do you think I would go back of you in that +way? I am satisfied now." + + + + +XXXIX. + +Instead of Burnamy, Mrs. Adding and her son now breakfasted with the +Marches at the Posthof, and the boy was with March throughout the day a +good deal. He rectified his impressions of life in Carlsbad by March's +greater wisdom and experience, and did his best to anticipate his +opinions and conform to his conclusions. This was not easy, for +sometimes he could not conceal from himself, that March's opinions were +whimsical, and his conclusions fantastic; and he could not always conceal +from March that he was matching them with Kenby's on some points, and +suffering from their divergence. He came to join the sage in his early +visit to the springs, and they walked up and down talking; and they went +off together on long strolls in which Rose was proud to bear him company. +He was patient of the absences from which he was often answered, and he +learned to distinguish between the earnest and the irony of which March's +replies seemed to be mixed. He examined him upon many features of German +civilization, but chiefly upon the treatment of women in it; and upon +this his philosopher was less satisfactory than he could have wished him +to be. He tried to excuse his trifling as an escape from the painful +stress of questions which he found so afflicting himself; but in the +matter of the woman-and-dog teams, this was not easy. March owned that +the notion of their being yokemates was shocking; but he urged that it +was a stage of evolution, and a distinct advance upon the time when women +dragged the carts without the help of the dogs; and that the time might +not be far distant when the dogs would drag the carts without the help of +the women. + +Rose surmised a joke, and he tried to enjoy it, but inwardly he was +troubled by his friend's apparent acceptance of unjust things on their +picturesque side. Once as they were sauntering homeward by the brink of +the turbid Eger, they came to a man lying on the grass with a pipe in his +mouth, and lazily watching from under his fallen lids the cows grazing by +the river-side, while in a field of scraggy wheat a file of women were +reaping a belated harvest with sickles, bending wearily over to clutch +the stems together and cut them with their hooked blades. "Ah, +delightful!" March took off his hat as if to salute the pleasant sight. + +"But don't you think, Mr. March," the boy ventured, "that the man had +better be cutting the wheat, and letting the women watch the cows?" + +"Well, I don't know. There are more of them; and he wouldn't be half so +graceful as they are, with that flow of their garments, and the sway of +their aching backs." The boy smiled sadly, and March put his hand on his +shoulder as they walked on. "You find a lot of things in Europe that +need putting right, don't you, Rose?" + +"Yes; I know it's silly." + +"Well, I'm not sure. But I'm afraid it's useless. You see, these old +customs go such a way back, and are so grounded in conditions. We think +they might be changed, if those who rule could be got to see how cruel +and ugly they are; but probably they couldn't. I'm afraid that the +Emperor of Austria himself couldn't change them, in his sovereign +plenitude of power. The Emperor is only an old custom too, and he's as +much grounded in the conditions as any." This was the serious way Rose +felt that March ought always to talk; and he was too much grieved to +laugh when he went on. "The women have so much of the hard work to do, +over here, because the emperors need the men for their armies. They +couldn't let their men cut wheat unless it was for their officers' +horses, in the field of some peasant whom it would ruin." + +If Mrs. March was by she would not allow him to work these paradoxes for +the boy's confusion. She said the child adored him, and it was a +sacrilege to play with his veneration. She always interfered to save +him, but with so little logic though so much justice that Rose suffered a +humiliation from her championship, and was obliged from a sense of self- +respect to side with the mocker. She understood this, and magnanimously +urged it as another reason why her husband should not trifle with Rose's +ideal of him; to make his mother laugh at him was wicked. + +"Oh, I'm not his only ideal," March protested. "He adores Kenby too, and +every now and then he brings me to book with a text from Kenby's gospel." + +Mrs. March caught her breath. "Kenby! Do you really think, then, that +she--" + +"Oh, hold on, now! It isn't a question of Mrs. Adding; and I don't say +Rose had an eye on poor old Kenby as a step-father. I merely want you to +understand that I'm the object of a divided worship, and that when I'm +off duty as an ideal I don't see why I shouldn't have the fun of making +Mrs. Adding laugh. You can't pretend she isn't wrapped up in the boy. +You've said that yourself." + +"Yes, she's wrapped up in him; she'd give her life for him; but she is so +light. I didn't suppose she was so light; but it's borne in upon me more +and more." + +They were constantly seeing Rose and his mother, in the sort of abeyance +the Triscoes had fallen into. One afternoon the Addings came to Mrs. +March's room to look from her windows at a parade of bicyclers' clubs +from the neighboring towns. The spectacle prospered through its first +half-hour, with the charm which German sentiment and ingenuity, are able +to lend even a bicycle parade. The wheelmen and wheelwomen filed by on +machines wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and decked with streaming +banners. Here and there one sat under a moving arch of blossoms, or in a +bower of leaves and petals, and they were all gay with their club +costumes and insignia. In the height of the display a sudden mountain +shower gathered and broke upon them. They braved it till it became a +drenching down-pour; then they leaped from their machines and fled to any +shelter they could find, under trees and in doorways. The men used their +greater agility to get the best places, and kept them; the women made no +appeal for them by word or look, but took the rain in the open as if they +expected nothing else. + +Rose watched the scene with a silent intensity which March interpreted. +"There's your chance, Rose. Why don't you go down and rebuke those +fellows?" + +Rose blushed and shrank away without answer, and Mrs. March promptly +attacked her husband in his behalf. "Why don't you go and rebuke them +yourself?" + +Well, for one thing, there isn't any conversation in my phrase-book +Between an indignant American Herr and a Party of German Wheelmen who +have taken Shelter from the Rain and are keeping the Wheelwomen out in +the Wet." Mrs. Adding shrieked her delight, and he was flattered into +going on. "For another thing, I think it's very well for you ladies to +realize from an object-lesson of this sort what spoiled children of our +civilization you are. It ought to make you grateful for your +privileges." + +"There is something in that," Mrs. Adding joyfully consented. + +"Oh, there is no civilization but ours," said Mrs. March, in a burst of +vindictive patriotism. "I am more and more convinced of it the longer I +stay in Europe." + +"Perhaps that's why we like to stay so long in Europe; it strengthens us +in the conviction that America is the only civilized country in the +world," said March. + +The shower passed as quickly as it had gathered, and the band which it +had silenced for a moment burst forth again in the music which fills the +Carlsbad day from dawn till dusk. Just now, it began to play a pot +pourri of American airs; at the end some unseen Americans under the trees +below clapped and cheered. + +"That was opportune of the band," said March. "It must have been a +telepathic impulse from our patriotism in the director. But a pot pourri +of American airs is like that tablet dedicating the American Park up here +on the Schlossberg, which is signed by six Jews and one Irishman. The +only thing in this medley that's the least characteristic or original is +Dixie; and I'm glad the South has brought us back into the Union." + +"You don't know one note from another, my dear," said his wife. + +"I know the 'Washington Post.'" + +"And don't you call that American?" + +"Yes, if Sousa is an American name; I should have thought it was +Portuguese." + +"Now that sounds a little too much like General Triscoe's pessimism," +said Mrs. March; and she added: "But whether we have any national +melodies or not, we don't poke women out in the rain and keep them +soaking!" + +"No, we certainly don't," he assented, with such a well-studied effect of +yielding to superior logic that Mrs. Adding screamed for joy. + +The boy had stolen out of the room, and he said, "I hope Rose isn't +acting on my suggestion?" + +"I hate to have you tease him, dearest," his wife interposed. + +"Oh, no," the mother said, laughing still, but with a note of tenderness +in her laugh, which dropped at last to a sigh. "He's too much afraid of +lese-majesty, for that. But I dare say he couldn't stand the sight. +He's queer." + +"He's beautiful!" said Mrs. March. + +"He's good," the mother admitted. "As good as the day's long. He's +never given me a moment's trouble--but he troubles me. If you can +understand!" + +"Oh, I do understand!" Mrs. March returned. "By his innocence, you mean. +That is the worst of children. Their innocence breaks our hearts and +makes us feel ourselves such dreadful old things." + +"His innocence, yes," pursued Mrs. Adding, "and his ideals." She began +to laugh again. "He may have gone off for a season of meditation and +prayer over the misbehavior of these bicyclers. His mind is turning that +way a good deal lately. It's only fair to tell you, Mr. March, that he +seems to be giving up his notion of being an editor. You mustn't be +disappointed." + +"I shall be sorry," said the editor. "But now that you mention it, I +think I have noticed that Rose seems rather more indifferent to +periodical literature. I supposed he might simply have exhausted his +questions--or my answers." + +"No; it goes deeper than that. I think it's Europe that's turned his +mind in the direction of reform. At any rate he thinks now he will be a +reformer." + +"Really! What kind of one? Not religious, I hope?" + +"No. His reform has a religious basis, but its objects are social. +I don't make it out, exactly; but I shall, as soon as Rose does. He +tells me everything, and sometimes I don't feel equal to it, spiritually +or even intellectually." + +"Don't laugh at him, Mrs. Adding!" Mrs. March entreated. + +"Oh, he doesn't mind my laughing," said the mother, gayly. Rose came +shyly back into the room, and she said, "Well, did you rebuke those bad +bicyclers?" and she laughed again. + +"They're only a custom, too, Rose,", said March, tenderly. "Like the man +resting while the women worked, and the Emperor, and all the rest of it." + +"Oh, yes, I know," the boy returned. + +"They ride modern machines, but they live in the tenth century. That's +what we're always forgetting when we come to Europe and see these +barbarians enjoying all our up-to-date improvements." + +There, doesn't that console you?" asked his mother, and she took him away +with her, laughing back from the door. "I don't believe it does, +a bit!" + +"I don't believe she understands the child," said Mrs. March. "She is +very light, don't you think? I don't know, after all, whether it +wouldn't be a good thing for her to marry Kenby. She is very easygoing, +and she will be sure to marry somebody." + +She had fallen into a tone of musing censure, and he said, "You might put +these ideas to her." + + + + +XL. + +With the passage of the days and weeks, the strange faces which had +familiarized themselves at the springs disappeared; even some of those +which had become the faces of acquaintance began to go. In the +diminishing crowd the smile of Otterson was no longer to be seen; the +sad, severe visage of Major Eltwin, who seemed never to have quite got +his bearings after his error with General Triscoe, seldom showed itself. +The Triscoes themselves kept out of the Marches' way, or they fancied so; +Mrs. Adding and Rose alone remained of their daily encounter. + +It was full summer, as it is everywhere in mid-August, but at Carlsbad +the sun was so late getting up over the hills that as people went to +their breakfasts at the cafes up the valley of the Tepl they found him +looking very obliquely into it at eight o'clock in the morning. The +yellow leaves were thicker about the feet of the trees, and the grass was +silvery gray with the belated dews. The breakfasters were fewer than +they had been, and there were more little barefooted boys and girls with +cups of red raspberries which they offered to the passers with cries of +"Himbeeren! Himbeeren!" plaintive as the notes of birds left songless by +the receding summer. + +March was forbidden the fruit, but his wife and Mrs. Adding bought +recklessly of it, and ate it under his eyes with their coffee and bread, +pouring over it pots of clotted cream that the 'schone' Lili brought +them. Rose pretended an indifference to it, which his mother betrayed +was a sacrifice in behalf of March's inability. + +Lili's delays in coming to be paid had been such that the Marches now +tried to pay her when she brought their breakfast, but they sometimes +forgot, and then they caught her whenever she came near them. In this +event she liked to coquet with their impatience; she would lean against +their table, and say: "Oh, no. You stay a little. It is so nice." One +day after such an entreaty, she said, "The queen is here, this morning." + +Mrs. March started, in the hope of highhotes. "The queen!" + +"Yes; the young lady. Mr. Burnamy was saying she was a queen. She is +there with her father." She nodded in the direction of a distant corner, +and the Marches knew that she meant Miss Triscoe and the general. "She +is not seeming so gayly as she was being." + +March smiled. "We are none of us so gayly as we were being, Lili. The +summer is going." + +"But Mr. Burnamy will be returning, not true?" the girl asked, resting +her tray on the corner of the table. + +"No, I'm afraid he won't," March returned sadly. + +"He was very good. He was paying the proprietor for the dishes that +Augusta did break when she was falling down. He was paying before he +went away, when he was knowing that the proprietor would make Augusta to +pay." + +"Ah!" said March, and his wife said, "That was like him!" and she +eagerly explained to Mrs. Adding how good and great Burnamy had been in +this characteristic instance, while Lili waited with the tray to add some +pathetic facts about Augusta's poverty and gratitude. "I think Miss +Triscoe ought to know it. There goes the wretch, now!" she broke off. +"Don't look at him!" She set her husband the example of averting his +face from the sight of Stoller sullenly pacing up the middle aisle of the +grove, and looking to the right and left for a vacant table. "Ugh! I +hope he won't be able to find a single place." + +Mrs. Adding gave one of her pealing laughs, while Rose watched March's +face with grave sympathy. "He certainly doesn't deserve one. Don't let +us keep you from offering Miss Triscoe any consolation you can." They +got up, and the boy gathered up the gloves, umbrella, and handkerchief +which the ladies let drop from their laps. + +"Have you been telling?" March asked his wife. + +"Have I told you anything?" she demanded of Mrs. Adding in turn. +"Anything that you didn't as good as know, already?" + +"Not a syllable!" Mrs. Adding replied in high delight. "Come, Rose!" + +"Well, I suppose there's no use saying anything," said March, after she +left them. + +"She had guessed everything, without my telling her," said his wife. + +"About Stoller?" + +"Well-no. I did tell her that part, but that was nothing. It was about +Burnamy and Agatha that she knew. She saw it from the first." + +"I should have thought she would have enough to do to look after poor old +Kenby." + +"I'm not sure, after all, that she cares for him. If she doesn't, she +oughtn't to let him write to her. Aren't you going over to speak to the +Triscoes?" + +"No, certainly not. I'm going back to the hotel. There ought to be some +steamer letters this morning. Here we are, worrying about these +strangers all the time, and we never give a thought to our own children +on the other side of the ocean." + +"I worry about them, too," said the mother, fondly. "Though there is +nothing to worry about," she added. + +"It's our duty to worry," he insisted. + +At the hotel the portier gave them four letters. There was one from each +of their children: one very buoyant, not to say boisterous, from the +daughter, celebrating her happiness in her husband, and the loveliness of +Chicago as a summer city ("You would think she was born out there!" +sighed her mother); and one from the son, boasting his well-being in +spite of the heat they were having ("And just think how cool it is here!" +his mother upbraided herself), and the prosperity of 'Every Other Week'. +There was a line from Fulkerson, praising the boy's editorial instinct, +and ironically proposing March's resignation in his favor. + +"I do believe we could stay all winter, just as well as not," said Mrs. +March, proudly. "What does 'Burnamy say?" + +"How do you know it's from him?" + +"Because you've been keeping your hand on it! Give it here." + +"When I've read it." + +The letter was dated at Ansbach, in Germany, and dealt, except for some +messages of affection to Mrs. March, with a scheme for a paper which +Burnamy wished to write on Kaspar Hauser, if March thought he could use +it in 'Every Other Week'. He had come upon a book about that hapless +foundling in Nuremberg, and after looking up all his traces there he had +gone on to Ansbach, where Kaspar Hauser met his death so pathetically. +Burnamy said he could not give any notion of the enchantment of +Nuremberg; but he besought March, if he was going to the Tyrol for his +after-cure, not to fail staying a day or so in the wonderful place. He +thought March would enjoy Ansbach too, in its way. + +"And, not a word--not a syllable--about Miss Triscoe!" cried Mrs. March. +"Shall you take his paper?" + +"It would be serving him right, if I refused it, wouldn't it?" + +They never knew what it cost Burnamy to keep her name out of his letter, +or by what an effort of the will he forbade himself even to tell of his +parting interview with Stoller. He had recovered from his remorse for +letting Stoller give himself away; he was still sorry for that, but he no +longer suffered; yet he had not reached the psychological moment when he +could celebrate his final virtue in the matter. He was glad he had been +able to hold out against the temptation to retrieve himself by another +wrong; but he was humbly glad, and he felt that until happier chance +brought him and his friends together he must leave them to their merciful +conjectures. He was young, and he took the chance, with an aching heart. +If he had been older, he might not have taken it. + + + + +XLI. + +The birthday of the Emperor comes conveniently, in late August, in the +good weather which is pretty sure to fall then, if ever in the Austrian +summer. For a week past, at Carlsbad, the workmen had been building a +scaffolding for the illumination in the woods on a height overlooking the +town, and making unobtrusive preparations at points within it. + +The day was important as the last of March's cure, and its pleasures +began for him by a renewal of his acquaintance in its first kindliness +with the Eltwins. He had met them so seldom that at one time he thought +they must have gone away, but now after his first cup he saw the quiet, +sad old pair, sitting together on a bench in the Stadt Park, and he asked +leave to sit down with them till it was time for the next. Eltwin said +that this was their last day, too; and explained that his wife always +came with him to the springs, while he took the waters. + +"Well," he apologized, "we're all that's left, and I suppose we like to +keep together." He paused, and at the look in March's face he suddenly +went on. "I haven't been well for three or four years; but I always +fought against coming out here, when the doctors wanted me to. I said I +couldn't leave home; and, I don't suppose I ever should. But my home +left me." + +As he spoke his wife shrank tenderly near him, and March saw her steal +her withered hand into his. + +"We'd had a large family, but they'd all died off, with one thing or +another, and here in the spring we lost our last daughter. Seemed +perfectly well, and all at once she died; heart-failure, they called it. +It broke me up, and mother, here, got at me to go. And so we're here." +His voice trembled; and his eyes softened; then they flashed up, and +March heard him add, in a tone that astonished him less when he looked +round and saw General Triscoe advancing toward them, "I don't know what +it is always makes me want to kick that man." + +The general lifted his hat to their group, and hoped that Mrs. Eltwin was +well, and Major Eltwin better. He did not notice their replies, but said +to March, "The ladies are waiting for you in Pupp's readingroom, to go +with them to the Posthof for breakfast." + +"Aren't you going, too?" asked March. + +"No, thank you," said the general, as if it were much finer not; +"I shall breakfast at our pension." He strolled off with the air of a +man who has done more than his duty. + +"I don't suppose I ought to feel that way," said Eltwin, with a remorse +which March suspected a reproachful pressure of his wife's hand had +prompted in him. "I reckon he means well." + +"Well, I don't know," March said, with a candor he could not wholly +excuse. + +On his way to the hotel he fancied mocking his wife for her interest in +the romantic woes of her lovers, in a world where there was such real +pathos as these poor old people's; but in the company of Miss Triscoe he +could not give himself this pleasure. He tried to amuse her on the way +from Pupp's, with the doubt he always felt in passing the Cafe Sans- +Souci, whether he should live to reach the Posthof where he meant to +breakfast. She said, "Poor Mr. March!" and laughed inattentively; when +he went on to philosophize the commonness of the sparse company always +observable at the Sans-Souci as a just effect of its Laodicean situation +between Pupp's and the Posthof, the girl sighed absently, and his wife +frowned at him. + +The flower-woman at the gate of her garden had now only autumnal blooms +for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the +rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance; a +poor remnant of the midsummer multitudes trailed itself along to the +various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like +sere foliage as it moved. + +At the Posthof the 'schone' Lili alone was as gay, as in the prime of +July. She played archly about the guests she welcomed to a table in a +sunny spot in the gallery. "You are tired of Carlsbad?" she said +caressingly to Miss Triscoe, as she put her breakfast before her. + +"Not of the Posthof," said the girl, listlessly. + +"Posthof, and very little Lili?" She showed, with one forefinger on +another, how very little she was. + +Miss Triscoe laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with +abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, +and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have +scolded her, and I have made her give it to me." + +She took from under her apron a man's handkerchief, which she offered to +Mrs. March. It bore, as she saw Miss Triscoe saw, the initials L. J. B. +But, "Whose can it be?" they asked each other. + +"Why, Burnamy's," said March; and Lili's eyes danced. "Give it here!" + +His wife caught it farther away. "No, I'm going to see whose it is, +first; if it's his, I'll send it to him myself." + +She tried to put it into the pocket which was not in her dress by sliding +it down her lap; then she handed it to the girl, who took it with a +careless air, but kept it after a like failure to pocket it. + +Mrs. March had come out in her India-rubber sandals, but for once in +Carlsbad the weather was too dry for them, and she had taken them off and +was holding them in her lap. They fell to the ground when she now rose +from breakfast, and she stooped to pick them up. Miss Triscoe was too +quick for her. + +"Oh, let me carry them for you!" she entreated, and after a tender +struggle she succeed in enslaving herself to them, and went away wearing +them through the heel-bands like manacles on her wrist. She was not the +kind of girl to offer such pretty devotions, and Mrs. March was not the +kind of woman to suffer them; but they played the comedy through, and let +March go off for his last hill-climb with the promise to meet him in the +Stadt Park when he came to the Kurhaus for his last mineral bath. + +Mrs. March in the mean time went about some final shopping, and invited +the girl's advice with a fondness which did not prevent her rejecting it +in every case, with Miss Triscoe's eager approval. In the Stadt Park +they sat down and talked; from time to time Mrs. March made polite feints +of recovering her sandals, but the girl kept them with increased +effusion. + +When they rose, and strolled away from the bench where they had been +sitting, they seemed to be followed. They looked round and saw no one +more alarming than a very severe-looking old gentleman, whose hat brim in +spite of his severity was limp with much lifting, as all Austrian hat +brims are. He touched it, and saying haughtily in German, "Something +left lying," passed on. + +They stared at each other; then, as women do, they glanced down at their +skirts to see if there was anything amiss with them, and Miss Triscoe +perceived her hands empty of Mrs. March's sandals and of Burnamy's +handkerchief. + +"Oh, I put it in one of the toes!" she lamented, and she fled back to +their bench, alarming in her course the fears of a gendarme for the +public security, and putting a baby in its nurse's arms into such doubts +of its personal safety that it burst into a desolate cry. She laughed +breathlessly as she rejoined Mrs. March. "That comes of having no +pocket; I didn't suppose I could forget your sandals, Mrs. March! Wasn't +it absurd?" + +"It's one of those things," Mrs. March said to her husband afterwards, +"that they can always laugh over together." + +"They? And what about Burnamy's behavior to Stoller?" + +"Oh, I don't call that anything but what will come right. Of course he +can make it up to him somehow. And I regard his refusal to do wrong when +Stoller wanted him to as quite wiping out the first offence." + +"Well, my dear, you have burnt your ships behind you. My only hope is +that when we leave here tomorrow, her pessimistic papa's poison will +neutralize yours somehow." + + + + +XLII. + +One of the pleasantest incidents of March's sojourn in Carlsbad was his +introduction to the manager of the municipal theatre by a common friend +who explained the editor in such terms to the manager that he conceived +of him as a brother artist. This led to much bowing and smiling from the +manager when the Marches met him in the street, or in their frequent +visits to the theatre, with which March felt that it might well have +ended, and still been far beyond his desert. He had not thought of going +to the opera on the Emperor's birthnight, but after dinner a box came +from the manager, and Mrs. March agreed with him that they could not in +decency accept so great a favor. At the same time she argued that they +could not in decency refuse it, and that to show their sense of the +pleasure done them, they must adorn their box with all the beauty and +distinction possible; in other words, she said they must ask Miss Triscoe +and her father. + +"And why not Major Eltwin and his wife? Or Mrs. Adding and Rose?" + +She begged him, simply in his own interest, not to be foolish; and they +went early, so as to be in their box when their guests came. The foyer +of the theatre was banked with flowers, and against a curtain of +evergreens stood a high-pedestalled bust of the paternal Caesar, with +whose side-whiskers a laurel crown comported itself as well as it could. +At the foot of the grand staircase leading to the boxes the manager stood +in evening dress, receiving his friends and their felicitations upon the +honor which the theatre was sure to do itself on an occasion so august. +The Marches were so cordial in their prophecies that the manager yielded +to an artist's impulse and begged his fellow-artist to do him the +pleasure of coming behind the scenes between the acts of the opera; he +bowed a heart-felt regret to Mrs. March that he could not make the +invitation include her, and hoped that she would not be too lonely while +her husband was gone. + +She explained that they had asked friends, and she should not be alone, +and then he entreated March to bring any gentleman who was his guest with +him. On the way up to their box, she pressed his arm as she used in +their young married days, and asked him if it was not perfect. "I wish +we were going to have it all to ourselves; no one else can appreciate the +whole situation. Do you think we have made a mistake in having the +Triscoes?" + +"We!" be retorted. "Oh, that's good! I'm going to shirk him, when it +comes to going behind the scenes." + +"No, no, dearest," she entreated. "Snubbing will only make it worse. We +must stand it to the bitter end, now." + +The curtain rose upon another laurelled bust of the Emperor, with a +chorus of men formed on either side, who broke into the grave and noble +strains of the Austrian Hymn, while every one stood. Then the curtain +fell again, and in the interval before the opera could begin, General +Triscoe and his daughter came in. + +Mrs. March took the splendor in which the girl appeared as a tribute to +her hospitality. She had hitherto been a little disappointed of the open +homage to American girlhood which her readings of international romance +had taught her to expect in Europe, but now her patriotic vanity feasted +full. Fat highhotes of her own sex levelled their lorgnettes at Miss +Triscoe all around the horseshoe, with critical glances which fell +blunted from her complexion and costume; the house was brilliant with the +military uniforms, which we have not yet to mingle with our unrivalled +millinery, and the ardent gaze of the young officers dwelt on the perfect +mould of her girlish arms and neck, and the winning lines of her face. +The girl's eyes shone with a joyful excitement, and her little head, +defined by its dark hair, trembled as she slowly turned it from side to +side, after she removed the airy scarf which had covered it. Her father, +in evening dress, looked the Third Emperor complaisant to a civil +occasion, and took a chair in the front of the box without resistance; +and the ladies disputed which should yield the best place to the other, +till Miss Triscoe forced Mrs. March fondly into it for the first act at +least. + +The piece had to be cut a good deal to give people time for the +illuminations afterwards; but as it was it gave scope to the actress who, +'als Gast' from a Viennese theatre, was the chief figure in it. She +merited the distinction by the art which still lingered, deeply embedded +in her massive balk, but never wholly obscured. + +"That is grand, isn't it?" said March, following one of the tremendous +strokes by which she overcame her physical disadvantages. "It's fine to +see how her art can undo, for one splendid instant, the work of all those +steins of beer, those illimitable licks of sausage, those boundless +fields of cabbage. But it's rather pathetic." + +"It's disgusting," said his wife; and at this General Triscoe, who had +been watching the actress through his lorgnette, said, as if his +contrary-mindedness were irresistibly invoked: + +"Well, I don't know. It's amusing. Do you suppose we shall see her when +we go behind, March?" + +He still professed a desire to do so when the curtain fell, and they +hurried to the rear door of the theatre. It was slightly ajar, and they +pulled it wide open, with the eagerness of their age and nation, and +began to mount the stairs leading up from it between rows of painted +dancing-girls, who had come out for a breath of air, and who pressed +themselves against the walls to make room for the intruders. With their +rouged faces, and the stare of their glassy eyes intensified by the +coloring of their brows and lashes, they were like painted statues, as +they stood there with their crimsoned lips parted in astonished smiles. + +"This is rather weird," said March, faltering at the sight. "I wonder if +we might ask these young ladies where to go?" General Triscoe made no +answer, and was apparently no more prepared than himself to accost the +files of danseuses, when they were themselves accosted by an angry voice +from the head of the stairs with a demand for their business. The voice +belonged to a gendarme, who descended toward them and seemed as deeply +scandalized at their appearance as they could have been at that of the +young ladies. + +March explained, in his ineffective German, with every effect of +improbability, that they were there by appointment of the manager, and +wished to find his room. + +The gendarme would not or could not make anything out of it. He pressed +down upon them, and laying a rude hand on a shoulder of either, began to +force them back to the door. The mild nature of the editor might have +yielded to his violence, but the martial spirit of General Triscoe was +roused. He shrugged the gendarme's hand from his shoulder, and with a +voice as furious as his own required him, in English, to say what the +devil he meant. The gendarme rejoined with equal heat in German; the +general's tone rose in anger; the dancing-girls emitted some little +shrieks of alarm, and fled noisily up the stairs. From time to time +March interposed with a word of the German which had mostly deserted him +in his hour of need; but if it had been a flow of intelligible +expostulation, it would have had no effect upon the disputants. They +grew more outrageous, till the manager himself, appeared at the head of +the stairs, and extended an arresting hand over the hubbub. As soon as +the situation clarified itself he hurried down to his visitors with a +polite roar of apology and rescued them from the gendarme, and led them +up to his room and forced them into arm-chairs with a rapidity of +reparation which did not exhaust itself till he had entreated them with +every circumstance of civility to excuse an incident so mortifying to +him. But with all his haste he lost so much time in this that he had +little left to show them through the theatre, and their presentation to +the prima donna was reduced to the obeisances with which they met and +parted as she went upon the stage at the lifting of the curtain. In the +lack of a common language this was perhaps as well as a longer interview; +and nothing could have been more honorable than their dismissal at the +hands of the gendarme who had received them so stormily. He opened the +door for them, and stood with his fingers to his cap saluting, in the +effect of being a whole file of grenadiers. + + + + +XLIII. + +At the same moment Burnamy bowed himself out of the box where he had been +sitting with the ladies during the absence of the gentlemen. He had +knocked at the door almost as soon as they disappeared, and if he did not +fully share the consternation which his presence caused, he looked so +frightened that Mrs. March reserved the censure which the sight of him +inspired, and in default of other inspiration treated his coming simply +as a surprise. She shook hands with him, and then she asked him to sit +down, and listened to his explanation that he had come back to Carlsbad +to write up the birthnight festivities, on an order from the Paris-New +York Chronicle; that he had seen them in the box and had ventured to took +in. He was pale, and so discomposed that the heart of justice was +softened more and more in Mrs. March's breast, and she left him to the +talk that sprang up, by an admirable effect of tact in the young lady, +between him and Miss Triscoe. + +After all, she decided, there was nothing criminal in his being in +Carlsbad, and possibly in the last analysis there was nothing so very +wicked in his being in her box. One might say that it was not very nice +of him after he had gone away under such a cloud; but on the other hand +it was nice, though in a different way, if he longed so much to see Miss +Triscoe that he could not help coming. It was altogether in his favor +that he was so agitated, though he was momently becoming less agitated; +the young people were beginning to laugh at the notion of Mr. March and +General Triscoe going behind the scenes. Burnamy said he envied them the +chance; and added, not very relevantly, that he had come from Baireuth, +where he had seen the last of the Wagner performances. He said he was +going back to Baireuth, but not to Ansbach again, where he had finished +looking up that Kaspar Hauser business. He seemed to think Mrs. March +would know about it, and she could not help saying; Oh, yes, Mr. March +was so much interested. She wondered if she ought to tell him about his +handkerchief; but she remembered in time that she had left it in Miss +Triscoe's keeping. She wondered if the girl realized how handsome he +was. He was extremely handsome, in his black evening dress, with his +Tuxedo, and the pallor of his face repeated in his expanse of shirt +front. + +At the bell for the rising of the curtain he rose too, and took their +offered hands. In offering hers Mrs. March asked if he would not stay +and speak with Mr. March and the general; and now for the first time he +recognized anything clandestine in his visit. He laughed nervously, and +said, "No, thank you!" and shut himself out. + +"We must tell them," said Mrs. March, rather interrogatively, and she was +glad that the girl answered with a note of indignation. + +"Why, certainly, Mrs. March." + +They could not tell them at once, for the second act had begun when March +and the general came back; and after the opera was over and they got out +into the crowded street there was no chance, for the general was obliged +to offer his arm to Mrs. March, while her husband followed with his +daughter. + +The facades of the theatre and of the hotels were outlined with thickly +set little lamps, which beaded the arches of the bridges spanning the +Tepl, and lighted the casements and portals of the shops. High above +all, against the curtain of black woodland on the mountain where its +skeleton had been growing for days, glittered the colossal effigy of the +doubleheaded eagle of Austria, crowned with the tiara of the Holy Roman +Empire; in the reflected splendor of its myriad lamps the pale Christ +looked down from the mountain opposite upon the surging multitudes in the +streets and on the bridges. + +They were most amiable multitudes, March thought, and they responded +docilely to the entreaties of the policemen who stood on the steps of the +bridges, and divided their encountering currents with patient appeals of +"Bitte schon! Bitte schon!" He laughed to think of a New York cop +saying "Please prettily! Please prettily!" to a New York crowd which he +wished to have go this way or that, and then he burned with shame to +think how far our manners were from civilization, wherever our heads and +hearts might be, when he heard a voice at his elbow: + +"A punch with a club would start some of these fellows along quicker." + +It was Stoller, and March turned from him to lose his disgust in the +sudden terror of perceiving that Miss Triscoe was no longer at his side. +Neither could he see his wife and General Triscoe, and he began to push +frantically about in the crowd looking for the girl. He had an +interminable five or ten minutes in his vain search, and he was going to +call out to her by name, when Burnamy saved him from the hopeless +absurdity by elbowing his way to him with Miss. Triscoe on his arm. + +"Here she is, Mr. March," he said, as if there were nothing strange in +his having been there to find her; in fact he had followed them all from +the theatre, and at the moment he saw the party separated, and Miss +Triscoe carried off helpless in the human stream, had plunged in and +rescued her. Before March could formulate any question in his +bewilderment, Burnamy was gone again; the girl offered no explanation for +him, and March had not yet decided to ask any when he caught sight of his +wife and General Triscoe standing tiptoe in a doorway and craning their +necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and his +charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express the +astonishment that filled him, when be was aware of an ominous shining of +her eyes and trembling of her hand on his arm. + +She pressed his arm nervously, and he understood her to beg him to +forbear at once all question of her and all comment on Burnamy's presence +to her father. + +It would not have been just the time for either. Not only Mrs. March was +with the general, but Mrs. Adding also; she had called to them from that +place, where she was safe with Rose when she saw them eddying about in +the crowd. The general was still, expressing a gratitude which became +more pressing the more it was disclaimed; he said casually at sight of +his daughter, "Ah; you've found us, have you?" and went on talking to +Mrs. Adding, who nodded to them laughingly, and asked, "Did you see me +beckoning?" + +"Look here, my dear!" March said to his wife as soon as they parted from +the rest, the general gallantly promising that his daughter and he would +see Mrs. Adding safe to her hotel, and were making their way slowly home +alone. "Did you know that Burnamy was in Carlsbad?" + +"He's going away on the twelve-o'clock train tonight," she answered, +firmly. + +"What has that got to do with it? Where did you see him?" + +"In the box, while you were behind the scenes." + +She told him all about it, and he listened in silent endeavor for the +ground of censure from which a sense of his own guilt forced him. She +asked suddenly, "Where did you see him?" and he told her in turn. + +He added severely, "Her father ought to know. Why didn't you tell him?" + +"Why didn't you?" she retorted with great reason. + +"Because I didn't think he was just in the humor for it." He began to +laugh as he sketched their encounter with the gendarme, but she did not +seem to think it amusing; and he became serious again. "Besides, I was +afraid she was going to blubber, any way." + +"She wouldn't have blubbered, as you call it. I don't know why you need +be so disgusting! It would have given her just the moral support she +needed. Now she will have to tell him herself, and he will blame us. +You ought to have spoken; you could have done it easily and naturally +when you came up with her. You will have yourself to thank for all the +trouble that comes of it, now, my dear." + +He shouted in admiration of her skill in shifting the blame on him. +"All right! I should have had to stand it, even if you hadn't behaved +with angelic wisdom." + +"Why," she said, after reflection, "I don't see what either of us has +done. We didn't get Burnamy to come here, or connive at his presence in +any way." + +"Oh! Make Triscoe believe that! He knows you've done all you could to +help the affair on." + +"Well, what if I have? He began making up to Mrs. Adding himself as soon +as he saw her, to-night. She looked very pretty." + +"Well, thank Heaven! we're off to-morrow morning, and I hope we've seen +the last of them. They've done what they could to spoil my cure, but I'm +not going to have them spoil my aftercure." + + + + +XLIV. + +Mrs. March had decided not to go to the Posthof for breakfast, where they +had already taken a lavish leave of the 'schone' Lili, with a sense of +being promptly superseded in her affections. They found a place in the +red-table-cloth end of the pavilion at Pupp's, and were served by the +pretty girl with the rose-bud mouth whom they had known only as Ein-und- +Zwanzig, and whose promise of "Komm' gleich, bitte schon!" was like a +bird's note. Never had the coffee been so good, the bread so aerially +light, the Westphalian ham so tenderly pink. A young married couple whom +they knew came by, arm in arm, in their morning walk, and sat down with +them, like their own youth, for a moment. + +"If you had told them we were going, dear," said Mrs. March, when the +couple were themselves gone, "we should have been as old as ever. Don't +let us tell anybody, this morning, that we're going. I couldn't bear +it." + +They had been obliged to take the secretary of the hotel into their +confidence, in the process of paying their bill. He put on his high hat +and came out to see them off. The portier was already there, standing at +the step of the lordly two-spanner which they had ordered for the long +drive to the station. The Swiss elevator-man came to the door to offer +them a fellow-republican's good wishes for their journey; Herr Pupp +himself appeared at the last moment to hope for their return another +summer. Mrs. March bent a last look of interest upon the proprietor as +their two-spanner whirled away. + +"They say that he is going to be made a count." + +"Well, I don't object," said March. "A man who can feed fourteen +thousand people, mostly Germans, in a day, ought to be made an archduke." + +At the station something happened which touched them even more than these +last attentions of the hotel. They were in their compartment, and were +in the act of possessing themselves of the best places by putting their +bundles and bags on them, when they heard Mrs. March's name called. + +They turned and saw Rose Adding at the door, his thin face flushed with +excitement and his eyes glowing. "I was afraid I shouldn't get here in +time," he panted, and he held up to her a huge bunch of flowers. + +"Why Rose! From your mother?" + +"From me," he said, timidly, and he was slipping out into the corridor, +when she caught him and his flowers to her in one embrace. "I want to +kiss you," she said; and presently, when he had waved his hand to them +from the platform outside, and the train had started, she fumbled for her +handkerchief. "I suppose you call it blubbering; but he is the sweetest +child!" + +"He's about the only one of our Carlsbad compatriots that I'm sorry to +leave behind," March assented. "He's the only unmarried one that wasn't +in danger of turning up a lover on my hands; if there had been some +rather old girl, or some rather light matron in our acquaintance, I'm not +sure that I should have been safe even from Rose. Carlsbad has been an +interruption to our silver wedding journey, my dear; but I hope now that +it will begin again." + +"Yes," said his wife, "now we can have each other all to ourselves." + +"Yes. It's been very different from our first wedding journey in that. +It isn't that we're not so young now as we were, but that we don't seem +so much our own property. We used to be the sole proprietors, and now we +seem to be mere tenants at will, and any interloping lover may come in +and set our dearest interests on the sidewalk. The disadvantage of +living along is that we get too much into the hands of other people." + +"Yes, it is. I shall be glad to be rid of them all, too." + +"I don't know that the drawback is serious enough to make us wish we had +died young--or younger," he suggested. + +"No, I don't know that it is," she assented. She added, from an absence +where he was sufficiently able to locate her meaning, "I hope she'll +write and tell me what her father says and does when she tells him that +he was there." + +There were many things, in the weather, the landscape, their sole +occupancy of an unsmoking compartment, while all the smoking compartments +round overflowed with smokers, which conspired to offer them a pleasing +illusion of the past; it was sometimes so perfect that they almost held +each other's hands. In later life there are such moments when the +youthful emotions come back, as certain birds do in winter, and the +elderly heart chirps and twitters to itself as if it were young. But it +is best to discourage this fondness; and Mrs. March joined her husband in +mocking it, when he made her observe how fit it was that their silver +wedding journey should be resumed as part of his after-cure. If he had +found the fountain of youth in the warm, flat, faintly nauseous water of +the Felsenquelle, he was not going to call himself twenty-eight again +till his second month of the Carlsbad regimen was out, and he had got +back to salad and fruit. + +At Eger they had a memorable dinner, with so much leisure for it that +they could form a life-long friendship for the old English-speaking +waiter who served them, and would not suffer them to hurry themselves. +The hills had already fallen away, and they ran along through a cheerful +country, with tracts of forest under white clouds blowing about in a blue +sky, and gayly flinging their shadows down upon the brown ploughed land, +and upon the yellow oat-fields, where women were cutting the leisurely +harvest with sickles, and where once a great girl with swarthy bare arms +unbent herself from her toil, and rose, a statue of rude vigor and +beauty, to watch them go by. Hedges of evergreen enclosed the yellow +oat-fields, where slow wagons paused to gather the sheaves of the week +before, and then loitered away with them. Flocks of geese waddled in +sculpturesque relief against the close-cropt pastures, herded by little +girls with flaxen pigtails, whose eyes, blue as corn-flowers, followed +the flying train. There were stretches of wild thyme purpling long +barren acreages, and growing up the railroad banks almost to the rails +themselves. From the meadows the rowen, tossed in long loose windrows, +sent into their car a sad autumnal fragrance which mingled with the +tobacco smoke, when two fat smokers emerged into the narrow corridor +outside their compartments and tried to pass each other. Their vast +stomachs beat together in a vain encounter. + +"Zu enge!" said one, and "Ja, zu enge!" said the other, and they laughed +innocently in each other's' faces, with a joy in their recognition of the +corridor's narrowness as great as if it had been a stroke of the finest +wit. + +All the way the land was lovely, and as they drew near Nuremberg it grew +enchanting, with a fairy quaintness. The scenery was Alpine, but the +scale was toy-like, as befitted the region, and the mimic peaks and +valleys with green brooks gushing between them, and strange rock forms +recurring in endless caprice, seemed the home of children's story. All +the gnomes and elves might have dwelt there in peaceful fellowship with +the peasants who ploughed the little fields, and gathered the garlanded +hops, and lived in the farmsteads and village houses with those high +timber-laced gables. + +"We ought to have come here long ago with the children, when they were +children," said March. + +"No," his wife returned; "it would have been too much for them. Nobody +but grown people could bear it." + +The spell which began here was not really broken by anything that +afterwards happened in Nuremberg, though the old toy-capital was trolley- +wired through all its quaintness, and they were lodged in a hotel lighted +by electricity and heated by steam, and equipped with an elevator which +was so modern that it came down with them as well as went up. All the +things that assumed to be of recent structure or invention were as +nothing against the dense past, which overwhelmed them with the sense of +a world elsewhere outlived. In Nuremberg it is not the quaint or the +picturesque that is exceptional; it is the matter-of-fact and the +commonplace. Here, more than anywhere else, you are steeped in the +gothic spirit which expresses itself in a Teutonic dialect of homely +sweetness, of endearing caprice, of rude grotesqueness, but of positive +grace and beauty almost never. It is the architectural speech of a +strenuous, gross, kindly, honest people's fancy; such as it is it was +inexhaustible, and such as it is it was bewitching for the travellers. + +They could hardly wait till they had supper before plunging into the +ancient town, and they took the first tram-car at a venture. It was a +sort of transfer, drawn by horses, which delivered them a little inside. +of the city gate to a trolley-car. The conductor with their fare +demanded their destination; March frankly owned that they did not know +where they wanted to go; they wanted to go anywhere the conductor chose; +and the conductor, after reflection, decided to put them down at the +public garden, which, as one of the newest things in the city, would make +the most favorable impression upon strangers. It was in fact so like all +other city gardens, with the foliage of its trimly planted alleys, that +it sheltered them effectually from the picturesqueness of Nuremberg, and +they had a long, peaceful hour on one of its benches, where they rested +from their journey, and repented their hasty attempt to appropriate the +charm of the city. + +The next morning it rained, according to a custom which the elevator-boy +(flown with the insolent recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said +was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote they +took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. +Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and +shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall +beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or +broad meshes of the shining foliage mantling its blackened masonry. A +tile-roofed open gallery ran along the top, where so many centuries of +sentries had paced, and arched the massive gates with heavily moulded +piers, where so countlessly the fierce burgher troops had sallied forth +against their besiegers, and so often the leaguer hosts had dashed +themselves in assault. The blood shed in forgotten battles would have +flooded the moat where now the grass and flowers grew, or here and there +a peaceful stretch of water stagnated. + +The drive ended in a visit to the old Burg, where the Hapsburg Kaisers +dwelt when they visited their faithful imperial city. From its ramparts +the incredible picturesqueness of Nuremberg best shows itself, and if one +has any love for the distinctive quality of Teutonic architecture it is +here that more than anywhere else one may feast it. The prospect of +tower and spire and gable is of such a mediaeval richness, of such an +abounding fulness, that all incidents are lost in it. The multitudinous +roofs of red-brown tiles, blinking browsily from their low dormers, press +upon one another in endless succession; they cluster together on a rise +of ground and sink away where the street falls, but they nowhere disperse +or scatter, and they end abruptly at the other rim of the city, beyond +which looms the green country, merging in the remoter blue of misty +uplands. + +A pretty young girl waited at the door of the tower for the visitors to +gather in sufficient number, and then led them through the terrible +museum, discanting in the same gay voice and with the same smiling air on +all the murderous engines and implements of torture. First in German and +then in English she explained the fearful uses of the Iron Maiden, she +winningly illustrated the action of the racks and wheels on which men had +been stretched and broken, and she sweetly vaunted a sword which had +beheaded eight hundred persons. When she took the established fee from +March she suggested, with a demure glance, "And what more you please for +saying it in English." + +"Can you say it in Russian?" demanded a young man, whose eyes he had seen +dwelling on her from the beginning. She laughed archly, and responded +with some Slavic words, and then delivered her train of sight-seers over +to the custodian who was to show them through the halls and chambers of +the Burg. These were undergoing the repairs which the monuments of the +past are perpetually suffering in the present, and there was some special +painting and varnishing for the reception of the Kaiser, who was coming +to Nuremberg for the military manoeuvres then at hand. But if they had +been in the unmolested discomfort of their unlivable magnificence, their +splendor was such as might well reconcile the witness to the superior +comfort of a private station in our snugger day. The Marches came out +owning that the youth which might once have found the romantic glories of +the place enough was gone from them. But so much of it was left to her +that she wished to make him stop and look at the flirtation which had +blossomed out between that pretty young girl and the Russian, whom they +had scarcely missed from their party in the Burg. He had apparently never +parted from the girl, and now as they sat together on the threshold of +the gloomy tower, he most have been teaching her more Slavic words, for +they were both laughing as if they understood each other perfectly. + +In his security from having the affair in any wise on his hands, March +would have willingly lingered, to see how her education got on; but it +began to rain, The rain did not disturb the lovers, but it obliged the +elderly spectators to take refuge in their carriage; and they drove off +to find the famous Little Goose Man. This is what every one does at +Nuremberg; it would be difficult to say why. When they found the Little +Goose Man, he was only a mediaeval fancy in bronze, who stood on his +pedestal in the market-place and contributed from the bill of the goose +under his arm a small stream to the rainfall drenching the wet wares of +the wet market-women round the fountain, and soaking their cauliflowers +and lettuce, their grapes and pears, their carrots and turnips, to the +watery flavor of all fruits and vegetables in Germany. + +The air was very raw and chill; but after supper the clouds cleared away, +and a pleasant evening tempted the travellers out. The portier +dissembled any slight which their eagerness for the only amusement he +could think of inspired, and directed them to a popular theatre which was +giving a summer season at low prices to the lower classes, and which they +surprised, after some search, trying to hide itself in a sort of back +square. They got the best places at a price which ought to have been +mortifyingly cheap, and found themselves, with a thousand other harmless +bourgeois folk, in a sort of spacious, agreeable barn, of a decoration by +no means ugly, and of a certain artless comfort. Each seat fronted a +shelf at the back of the seat before it, where the spectator could put +his hat; there was a smaller shelf for his stein of the beer passed +constantly throughout the evening; and there was a buffet where he could +stay himself with cold ham and other robust German refreshments. + +It was "The Wedding Journey to Nuremberg" upon which they had oddly +chanced, and they accepted as a national tribute the character of an +American girl in it. She was an American girl of the advanced pattern, +and she came and went at a picnic on the arm of a head waiter. She +seemed to have no office in the drama except to illustrate a German +conception of American girlhood, but even in this simple function she +seemed rather to puzzle the German audience; perhaps because of the +occasional English words which she used. + +To the astonishment of her compatriots, when they came out of the theatre +it was not raining; the night was as brilliantly starlit as a night could +be in Germany, and they sauntered home richly content through the narrow +streets and through the beautiful old Damenthor, beyond which their hotel +lay. How pretty, they said, to call that charming port the Ladies' Gate! +They promised each other to find out why, and they never did so, but +satisfied themselves by assigning it to the exclusive use of the slim +maidens and massive matrons of the old Nuremberg patriciate, whom they +imagined trailing their silken splendors under its arch in perpetual +procession. + + + + +XLV. + +The life of the Nuremberg patriciate, now extinct in the control of the +city which it builded so strenuously and maintained so heroically, is +still insistent in all its art. This expresses their pride at once and +their simplicity with a childish literality. At its best it is never so +good as the good Italian art, whose influence is always present in its +best. The coloring of the great canvases is Venetian, but there is no +such democracy of greatness as in the painting at Venice; in decoration +the art of Nuremberg is at best quaint, and at the worst puerile. +Wherever it had obeyed an academic intention it seemed to March poor and +coarse, as in the bronze fountain beside the Church of St. Lawrence. The +water spins from the pouted breasts of the beautiful figures in streams +that cross and interlace after a fancy trivial and gross; but in the base +of the church there is a time-worn Gethsemane, exquisitely affecting in +its simple-hearted truth. The long ages have made it even more affecting +than the sculptor imagined it; they have blurred the faces and figures in +passing till their features are scarcely distinguishable; and the +sleeping apostles seem to have dreamed themselves back into the mother- +marble. It is of the same tradition and impulse with that supreme glory +of the native sculpture, the ineffable tabernacle of Adam Krafft, which +climbs a column of the church within, a miracle of richly carven story; +and no doubt if there were a Nuremberg sculptor doing great things today, +his work would be of kindred inspiration. + +The descendants of the old patrician who ordered the tabernacle at rather +a hard bargain from the artist still worship on the floor below, and the +descendants of his neighbor patricians have their seats in the pews +about, and their names cut in the proprietary plates on the pew-tops. +The vergeress who showed the Marches through the church was devout in the +praise of these aristocratic fellow-citizens of hers. "So simple, and +yet so noble!" she said. She was a very romantic vergeress, and she told +them at unsparing length the legend of the tabernacle, how the artist +fell asleep in despair of winning his patron's daughter, and saw in a +vision the master-work with the lily-like droop at top, which gained him +her hand. They did not realize till too late that it was all out of a +novel of Georg Ebers's, but added to the regular fee for the church a +gift worthy of an inedited legend. + +Even then they had a pleasure in her enthusiasm rarely imparted by the +Nuremberg manner. They missed there the constant, sweet civility of +Carlsbad, and found themselves falling flat in their endeavors for a +little cordiality. They indeed inspired with some kindness the old woman +who showed them through that cemetery where Albert Durer and Hans Sachs +and many other illustrious citizens lie buried under monumental brasses +of such beauty: + + "That kings to have the like, might wish to die." + +But this must have been because they abandoned themselves so willingly to +the fascination of the bronze skull on the tomb of a fourteenth-century +patrician, which had the uncommon advantage of a lower jaw hinged to the +upper. She proudly clapped it up and down for their astonishment, and +waited, with a toothless smile, to let them discover the bead of a nail +artfully figured in the skull; then she gave a shrill cackle of joy, and +gleefully explained that the wife of this patrician had killed him by +driving a nail into his temple, and had been fitly beheaded for the +murder. + +She cared so much for nothing else in the cemetery, but she consented to +let them wonder at the richness of the sculpture in the level tombs, with +their escutcheons and memorial tablets, overrun by the long grass and the +matted ivy; she even consented to share their indignation at the +destruction of some of the brasses and the theft of others. She suffered +more reluctantly their tenderness for the old, old crucifixion figured in +sculpture at one corner of the cemetery, where the anguish of the Christ +had long since faded into the stone from which it had been evoked, and +the thieves were no longer distinguishable in their penitence or +impenitence; but she parted friends with them when she saw how much they +seemed taken with the votive chapel of the noble Holzschuh family, where +a line of wooden shoes puns upon the name in the frieze, like the line of +dogs which chase one another, with bones in their mouths, around the +Canossa palace at Verona. A sense of the beautiful house by the Adige +was part of the pleasing confusion which possessed them in Nuremberg +whenever they came upon the expression of the gothic spirit common both +to the German and northern Italian art. They knew that it was an effect +which had passed from Germany into Italy, but in the liberal air of the +older land it had come to so much more beauty that now, when they found +it in its home, it seemed something fetched from over the Alps and +coarsened in the attempt to naturalize it to an alien air. + +In the Germanic Museum they fled to the Italian painters from the German +pictures they had inspired; in the great hall of the Rathhaus the noble +Processional of Durer was the more precious, because his Triumph of +Maximilian somehow suggested Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar. There was to +be a banquet in the hall, under the mighty fresco, to welcome the German +Emperor, coming the next week, and the Rathhaus was full of work-people +furbishing it up against his arrival, and making it difficult for the +custodian who had it in charge to show it properly to strangers. She was +of the same enthusiastic sisterhood as the vergeress of St. Lawrence and +the guardian of the old cemetery, and by a mighty effort she prevailed +over the workmen so far as to lead her charges out through the corridor +where the literal conscience of the brothers Kuhn has wrought in the roof +to an exact image of a tournament as it was in Nuremberg four hundred +years ago. In this relief, thronged with men and horses, the gala-life +of the past survives in unexampled fulness; and March blamed himself +after enjoying it for having felt in it that toy-figure quality which +seems the final effect of the German gothicism in sculpture. + + + + +XLVI. + +On Sunday Mrs. March partially conformed to an earlier New England ideal +of the day by ceasing from sight-seeing. She could not have understood +the sermon if she had gone to church, but she appeased the lingering +conscience she had on this point by not going out till afternoon. Then +she found nothing of the gayety which Sunday afternoon wears in Catholic +lands. The people were resting from their week-day labors, but they were +not playing; and the old churches, long since converted to Lutheran uses, +were locked against tourist curiosity. + +It was as it should be; it was as it would be at home; and yet in this +ancient city, where the past was so much alive in the perpetual +picturesqueness, the Marches felt an incongruity in it; and they were +fain to escape from the Protestant silence and seriousness of the streets +to the shade of the public garden they had involuntarily visited the +evening of their arrival. + +On a bench sat a quiet, rather dejected man, whom March asked some +question of their way. He answered in English, and in the parley that +followed they discovered that they were all Americans. The stranger +proved to be an American of the sort commonest in Germany, and he said he +had returned to his native country to get rid of the ague which he had +taken on Staten Island. He had been seventeen years in New York, and now +a talk of Tammany and its chances in the next election, of pulls and +deals, of bosses and heelers, grew up between the civic step-brothers, +and joined them is a common interest. The German-American said he was +bookkeeper in some glass-works which had been closed by our tariff, and +he confessed that he did not mean to return to us, though he spoke of +German affairs with the impartiality of an outsider. He said that the +Socialist party was increasing faster than any other, and that this +tacitly meant the suppression of rank and the abolition of monarchy. He +warned March against the appearance of industrial prosperity in Germany; +beggary was severely repressed, and if poverty was better clad than with +us, it was as hungry and as hopeless in Nuremberg as in New York. The +working classes were kindly and peaceable; they only knifed each other +quietly on Sunday evenings after having too much beer. + +Presently the stranger rose and bowed to the Marches for good-by; and as +he walked down the aisle of trees in which they had been fitting +together, he seemed to be retreating farther and farther from such +Americanism as they had in common. He had reverted to an entirely German +effect of dress and figure; his walk was slow and Teutonic; he must be a +type of thousands who have returned to the fatherland without wishing to +own themselves its children again, and yet out of heart with the only +country left them. + +"He was rather pathetic, my dear," said March, in the discomfort he knew +his wife must be feeling as well as himself. "How odd to have the lid +lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the +witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home! +And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the +mouths of those poor glass-workers!" + +"I thought that was hard," she sighed. "It must have been his bread, +too." + +"Let's hope it was not his cake, anyway. I suppose," he added, dreamily, +"that what we used to like in Italy was the absence of all the modern +activities. The Italians didn't repel us by assuming to be of our epoch +in the presence of their monuments; they knew how to behave as pensive +memories. I wonder if they're still as charming." + +"Oh, no," she returned, "nothing is as charming as it used to be. And +now we need the charm more than ever." + +He laughed at her despair, in the tacit understanding they had lived into +that only one of them was to be desperate at a time, and that they were +to take turns in cheering each other up. "Well, perhaps we don't deserve +it. And I'm not sure that we need it so much as we did when we were +young. We've got tougher; we can stand the cold facts better now. They +made me shiver once, but now they give me a sort of agreeable thrill. +Besides, if, life kept up its pretty illusions, if it insisted upon being +as charming as it used to be, how could we ever bear to die? We've got +that to consider." He yielded to the temptation of his paradox, but he +did not fail altogether of the purpose with which he began, and they took +the trolley back to their hotel cheerful in the intrepid fancy that they +had confronted fate when they had only had the hardihood to face a +phrase. + +They agreed that now he ought really to find out something about the +contemporary life of Nuremberg, and the next morning he went out before +breakfast, and strolled through some of the simpler streets, in the hope +of intimate impressions. The peasant women, serving portions of milk +from house to house out of the cans in the little wagons which they drew +themselves, were a touch of pleasing domestic comedy; a certain effect of +tragedy imparted itself from the lamentations of the sucking-pigs jolted +over the pavements in handcarts; a certain majesty from the long +procession of yellow mail-wagons, with drivers in the royal Bavarian +blue, trooping by in the cold small rain, impassibly dripping from their +glazed hat-brims upon their uniforms. But he could not feel that these +things were any of them very poignantly significant; and he covered his +retreat from the actualities of Nuremberg by visiting the chief book- +store and buying more photographs of the architecture than he wanted, and +more local histories than be should ever read. He made a last effort for +the contemporaneous life by asking the English-speaking clerk if there +were any literary men of distinction living in Nuremberg, and the clerk +said there was not one. + +He went home to breakfast wondering if be should be able to make his +meagre facts serve with his wife; but he found her far from any wish to +listen to them. She was intent upon a pair of young lovers, at a table +near her own, who were so absorbed in each other that they were proof +against an interest that must otherwise have pierced them through. The +bridegroom, as he would have called himself, was a pretty little Bavarian +lieutenant, very dark and regular, and the bride was as pretty and as +little, but delicately blond. Nature had admirably mated them, and if +art had helped to bring them together through the genius of the bride's +mother, who was breakfasting with them, it had wrought almost as fitly. +Mrs. March queried impartially who they were, where they met, and how, +and just when they were going to be married; and March consented, in his +personal immunity from their romance, to let it go on under his eyes +without protest. But later, when they met the lovers in the street, +walking arm in arm, with the bride's mother behind them gloating upon +their bliss, he said the woman ought, at her time of life, to be ashamed +of such folly. She must know that this affair, by nine chances out of +ten, could not fail to eventuate at the best in a marriage as tiresome as +most other marriages, and yet she was abandoning herself with those +ignorant young people to the illusion that it was the finest and sweetest +thing in life. + +"Well, isn't it?" his wife asked. + +"Yes, that's the worst of it. It shows how poverty-stricken life really +is. We want somehow to believe that each pair of lovers will find the +good we have missed, and be as happy as we expected to be." + +"I think we have been happy enough, and that we've had as much good as +was wholesome for us," she returned, hurt. + +"You're always so concrete! I meant us in the abstract. But if you will +be personal, I'll say that you've been as happy as you deserve, and got +more good than you had any right to." + +She laughed with him, and then they laughed again to perceive that they +were walking arm in arm too, like the lovers, whom they were insensibly +following. + +He proposed that while they were in the mood they should go again to the +old cemetery, and see the hinged jaw of the murdered Paumgartner, wagging +in eternal accusation of his murderess. "It's rather hard on her, that +he should be having the last word, that way," he said. "She was a woman, +no matter what mistakes she had committed." + +"That's what I call 'banale'," said Mrs. March. + +"It is, rather," he confessed. "It makes me feel as if I must go to see +the house of Durer, after all." + +"Well, I knew we should have to, sooner or later." + +It was the thing that they had said would not do, in Nuremberg, because +everybody did it; but now they hailed a fiacre, and ordered it driven to +Durer's house, which they found in a remote part of the town near a +stretch of the city wall, varied in its picturesqueness by the +interposition of a dripping grove; it was raining again by the time they +reached it. The quarter had lapsed from earlier dignity, and without +being squalid, it looked worn and hard worked; otherwise it could hardly +have been different in Durer's time. His dwelling, in no way impressive +outside, amidst the environing quaintness, stood at the corner of a +narrow side-hill street that sloped cityward; and within it was stripped +bare of all the furniture of life below-stairs, and above was none the +cozier for the stiff appointment of a show-house. It was cavernous and +cold; but if there had been a fire in the kitchen, and a table laid in +the dining-room, and beds equipped for nightmare, after the German +fashion, in the empty chambers, one could have imagined a kindly, simple, +neighborly existence there. It in no wise suggested the calling of an +artist, perhaps because artists had not begun in Durer's time to take +themselves so objectively as they do now, but it implied the life of a +prosperous citizen, and it expressed the period. + +The Marches wrote their names in the visitors' book, and paid the +visitor's fee, which also bought them tickets in an annual lottery for a +reproduction of one of Durer's pictures; and then they came away, by no +means dissatisfied with his house. By its association with his sojourns +in Italy it recalled visits to other shrines, and they had to own that it +was really no worse than Ariosto's house at Ferrara, or Petrarch's at +Arqua, or Michelangelo's at Florence. "But what I admire," he said, "is +our futility in going to see it. We expected to surprise some quality of +the man left lying about in the house because he lived and died in it; +and because his wife kept him up so close there, and worked him so hard +to save his widow from coming to want." + +"Who said she did that?" + +"A friend of his who hated her. But he had to allow that she was a God- +fearing woman, and had a New England conscience." + +"Well, I dare say Durer was easy-going." + +"Yes; but I don't like her laying her plans to survive him; though women +always do that." + +They were going away the next day, and they sat down that evening to a +final supper in such good-humor with themselves that they were willing to +include a young couple who came to take places at their table, though +they would rather have been alone. They lifted their eyes for their +expected salutation, and recognized Mr. and Mrs. Leffers, of the +Norumbia. + +The ladies fell upon each other as if they had been mother and daughter; +March and the young man shook hands, in the feeling of passengers +mutually endeared by the memories of a pleasant voyage. They arrived at +the fact that Mr. Leffers had received letters in England from his +partners which allowed him to prolong his wedding journey in a tour of +the continent, while their wives were still exclaiming at their encounter +in the same hotel at Nuremberg; and then they all sat down to have, as +the bride said, a real Norumbia time. + +She was one of those young wives who talk always with their eyes +submissively on their husbands, no matter whom they are speaking to; +but she was already unconsciously ruling him in her abeyance. No doubt +she was ruling him for his good; she had a livelier, mind than he, and +she knew more, as the American wives of young American business men +always do, and she was planning wisely for their travels. She recognized +her merit in this devotion with an artless candor, which was typical +rather than personal. March was glad to go out with Leffers for a little +stroll, and to leave Mrs. March to listen to Mrs. Leffers, who did not +let them go without making her husband promise to wrap up well, and not +get his feet wet. She made March promise not to take him far, and to +bring him back early, which he found himself very willing to do, after an +exchange of ideas with Mr. Leffers. The young man began to talk about +his wife, in her providential, her almost miraculous adaptation to the +sort of man he was, and when he had once begun to explain what sort of +man he was, there was no end to it, till they rejoined the ladies in the +reading-room. + + + + +XLVII. + +The young couple came to the station to see the Marches off after dinner +the next day; and the wife left a bank of flowers on the seat beside Mrs. +March, who said, as soon as they were gone, "I believe I would rather +meet people of our own age after this. I used to think that you could +keep young by being with young people; but I don't, now. There world is +very different from ours. Our world doesn't really exist any more, but +as long as we keep away from theirs we needn't realize it. Young +people," she went on, "are more practical-minded than we used to be; +they're quite as sentimental; but I don't think they care so much for the +higher things. They're not so much brought up on poetry as we were," she +pursued. "That little Mrs. Leffers would have read Longfellow in our +time; but now she didn't know of his poem on Nuremberg; she was +intelligent enough about the place, but you could see that its quaintness +was not so precious as it was to us; not so sacred." Her tone entreated +him to find more meaning in her words than she had put into them. "They +couldn't have felt as we did about that old ivied wall and that grassy, +flowery moat under it; and the beautiful Damenthor and that pile-up of +the roofs from the Burg; and those winding streets with their Gothic +facades all, cobwebbed with trolley wires; and that yellow, aguish- +looking river drowsing through the town under the windows of those +overhanging houses; and the market-place, and the squares before the +churches, with their queer shops in the nooks and corners round them!" + +"I see what you mean. But do you think it's as sacred to us as it would +have been twenty-five years ago? I had an irreverent feeling now and +then that Nuremberg was overdoing Nuremberg." + +"Oh, yes; so had I. We're that modern, if we're not so young as we +were." + +"We were very simple, in those days." + +"Well, if we were simple, we knew it!" + +"Yes; we used to like taking our unconsciousness to pieces and looking at +it." + +"We had a good time." + +"Too good. Sometimes it seems as if it would have lasted longer if it +had not been so good. We might have our cake now if we hadn't eaten it." + +"It would be mouldy, though." + +"I wonder," he said, recurring to the Lefferses; "how we really struck +them." + +"Well, I don't believe they thought we ought to be travelling about +alone, quite, at our age." + +"Oh, not so bad as that! "After a moment he said, "I dare say they don't +go round quarrelling on their wedding journey, as we did." + +"Indeed they do! They had an awful quarrel just before they got to +Nuremberg: about his wanting to send some of the baggage to Liverpool by +express that she wanted to keep with them. But she said it had been a +lesson, and they were never going to quarrel again." The elders looked +at each other in the light of experience, and laughed. "Well," she +ended, "that's one thing we're through with. I suppose we've come to +feel more alike than we used to." + +"Or not to feel at all. How did they settle it about the baggage?" + +"Oh! He insisted on her keeping it with her." March laughed again, but +this time he laughed alone, and after a while she said: "Well, they gave +just the right relief to Nuremberg, with their good, clean American +philistinism. I don't mind their thinking us queer; they must have +thought Nuremberg was queer." + +"Yes. We oldsters are always queer to the young. We're either +ridiculously lively and chirpy, or we're ridiculously stiff and grim; +they never expect to be like us, and wouldn't, for the world. The worst +of it is, we elderly people are absurd to one another; we don't, at the +bottom of our hearts, believe we're like that, when we meet. I suppose +that arrogant old ass of a Triscoe looks upon me as a grinning dotard." + +"I wonder," said Mrs. March, "if she's told him yet," and March perceived +that she was now suddenly far from the mood of philosophic introspection; +but he had no difficulty in following her. + +"She's had time enough. But it was an awkward task Burnamy left to her." + +"Yes, when I think of that, I can hardly forgive him for coming back in +that way. I know she is dead in love with him; but she could only have +accepted him conditionally." + +"Conditionally to his making it all right with Stoller?" + +"Stoller? No! To her father's liking it." + +"Ah, that's quite as hard. What makes you think she accepted him at +all?" + +"What do you think she was crying about?" + +"Well, I have supposed that ladies occasionally shed tears of pity. If +she accepted him conditionally she would have to tell her father about +it." Mrs. March gave him a glance of silent contempt, and he hastened to +atone for his stupidity. "Perhaps she's told him on the instalment plan. +She may have begun by confessing that Burnamy had been in Carlsbad. Poor +old fellow, I wish we were going to find him in Ansbach! He could make +things very smooth for us." + +"Well, you needn't flatter yourself that you'll find him in Ansbach. I'm +sure I don't know where he is." + +"You might write to Miss Triscoe and ask." + +"I think I shall wait for Miss Triscoe to write to me," she said, with +dignity. + +"Yes, she certainly owes you that much, after all your suffering for her. +I've asked the banker in Nuremberg to forward our letters to the poste +restante in Ansbach. Isn't it good to see the crows again, after those +ravens around Carlsbad?" + +She joined him in looking at the mild autumnal landscape through the open +window. The afternoon was fair and warm, and in the level fields bodies +of soldiers were at work with picks and spades, getting the ground ready +for the military manoeuvres; they disturbed among the stubble foraging +parties of crows, which rose from time to time with cries of indignant +protest. She said, with a smile for the crows, "Yes. And I'm thankful +that I've got nothing on my conscience, whatever happens," she added in +dismissal of the subject of Burnamy. + +"I'm thankful too, my dear. I'd much rather have things on my own. I'm +more used to that, and I believe I feel less remorse than when you're to +blame." + +They might have been carried near this point by those telepathic +influences which have as yet been so imperfectly studied. It was only +that morning, after the lapse of a week since Burnamy's furtive +reappearance in Carlsbad, that Miss Triscoe spoke to her father about it, +and she had at that moment a longing for support and counsel that might +well have made its mystical appeal to Mrs. March. + +She spoke at last because she could put it off no longer, rather than +because the right time had come. She began as they sat at breakfast. +"Papa, there is something that I have got to tell yon. It is something +that you ought to know; but I have put off telling you because--" + +She hesitated for the reason, and "Well!" said her father, looking up at +her from his second cup of coffee. "What is it?" + +Then she answered, "Mr. Burnamy has been here." + +"In Carlsbad? When was he here?" + +"The night of the Emperor's birthday. He came into the box when you were +behind the scenes with Mr. March; afterwards I met him in the crowd." + +"Well?" + +"I thought you ought to know. Mrs. March said I ought to tell you." + +"Did she say you ought to wait a week?" He gave way to an irascibility +which he tried to check, and to ask with indifference, "Why did he come +back?" + +"He was going to write about it for that paper in Paris." The girl had +the effect of gathering her courage up for a bold plunge. She looked +steadily at her father, and added: "He said he came back because he +couldn't help it. He--wished to speak with me, He said he knew he had no +right to suppose I cared anything about what had happened with him and +Mr. Stoller. He wanted to come back and tell me--that." + +Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to leave +the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked at last with +a mildness that seemed to surprise her, "Have you heard anything from him +since?" + +"No." + +"Where is he?" + +"I don't know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must +tell you about it." + +The case was less simple than it would once have been for General +Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for +her happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his +own interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put +his paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with +himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him +without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather +have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very +prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for whom +she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to +extremes concerning him. + +"He was very anxious," she went on, "that you should know just how it +was. He thinks everything of your judgment and--and--opinion." The +general made a consenting noise in his throat. "He said that he did not +wish me to 'whitewash' him to you. He didn't think he had done right; he +didn't excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from the +stand-point of a gentleman." + +The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, "How +do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?" + +"I don't believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March--" + +"Oh, Mrs. March!" the general snorted. + +"--says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burnamy +does." + +"I doubt it. At any rate, I understood March quite differently." + +"She says that he thinks he behaved very nobly afterwards when Mr. +Stoller wanted him to help him put a false complexion on it; that it was +all the more difficult for him to do right then, because of his remorse +for what he had done before." As she spoke on she had become more eager. + +"There's something in that," the general admitted, with a candor that he +made the most of both to himself and to her. "But I should like to know +what Stoller had to say of it all. Is there anything," he inquired, "any +reason why I need be more explicit about it, just now?" + +"N--no. Only, I thought--He thinks so much of your opinion that--if--" + +"Oh, he can very well afford to wait. If he values my opinion so highly +he can give me time to make up my mind." + +"Of course--" + +"And I'm not responsible," the general continued, significantly, "for the +delay altogether. If you had told me this before--Now, I don't know +whether Stoller is still in town." + +He was not behaving openly with her; but she had not behaved openly with +him. She owned that to herself, and she got what comfort she could from +his making the affair a question of what Burnamy had done to Stoller +rather than of what Burnamy had said to her, and what she had answered +him. If she was not perfectly clear as to what she wanted to do, or +wished to have happen, there was now time and place in which she could +delay and make sure. The accepted theory of such matters is that people +know their minds from the beginning, and that they do not change them. +But experience seems to contradict this theory, or else people often act +contrary to their convictions and impulses. If the statistics were +accessible, it might be found that many potential engagements hovered in +a doubtful air, and before they touched the earth in actual promise were +dissipated by the play of meteorological chances. + +When General Triscoe put down his napkin in rising he said that he would +step round to Pupp's and see if Stoller were still there. But on the way +he stepped up to Mrs. Adding's hotel on the hill, and he came back, after +an interval which he seemed not to have found long, to report rather +casually that Stoller had left Carlsbad the day before. By this time the +fact seemed not to concern Agatha herself very vitally. + +He asked if the Marches had left any address with her, and she answered +that they had not. They were going to spend a few days in Nuremberg, and +then push on to Holland for Mr. March's after-cure. There was no +relevance in his question unless it intimated his belief that she was in +confidential correspondence with Mrs. March, and she met this by saying +that she was going to write her in care of their bankers; she asked +whether he wished to send any word. + +"No. I understand," he intimated, "that there is nothing at all in the +nature of a--a--an understanding, then, with--" + +"No, nothing." + +"Hm!" The general waited a moment. Then he ventured, "Do you care to +say--do you wish me to know--how he took it?" + +The tears came into the girl's eyes, but she governed herself to say, +"He--he was disappointed." + +"He had no right to be disappointed." + +It was a question, and she answered: "He thought he had. He said--that +he wouldn't--trouble me any more." + +The general did not ask at once, "And you don't know where he is now--you +haven't heard anything from him since?" + +Agatha flashed through her tears, "Papa!" + +"Oh! I beg your pardon. I think you told me." + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Americans are hungrier for royalty than anybody else +Effort to get on common ground with an inferior +He buys my poverty and not my will +Honest selfishness +Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate +Less intrusive than if he had not been there +Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign +Only one of them was to be desperate at a time +Reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last +Voting-cattle whom they bought and sold +We don't seem so much our own property +We get too much into the hands of other people + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Their Silver Wedding Journey, v2 +by William Dean Howells + + + + + + +THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY + +PART III. + + +XLVIII. + +At the first station where the train stopped, a young German bowed +himself into the compartment with the Marches, and so visibly resisted an +impulse to smoke that March begged him to light his cigarette. In the +talk which this friendly overture led to between them he explained that +he was a railway architect, employed by the government on that line of +road, and was travelling officially. March spoke of Nuremberg; he owned +the sort of surfeit he had suffered from its excessive mediaevalism, and +the young man said it was part of the new imperial patriotism to cherish +the Gothic throughout Germany; no other sort of architecture was +permitted in Nuremberg. But they would find enough classicism at +Ansbach, he promised them, and he entered with sympathetic intelligence +into their wish to see this former capital when March told him they were +going to stop there, in hopes of something typical of the old disjointed +Germany of the petty principalities, the little paternal despotisms now +extinct. + +As they talked on, partly in German and partly in English, their purpose +in visiting Ansbach appeared to the Marches more meditated than it was. +In fact it was somewhat accidental; Ansbach was near Nuremberg; it was +not much out of the way to Holland. They took more and more credit to +themselves for a reasoned and definite motive, in the light of their +companion's enthusiasm for the place, and its charm began for them with +the drive from the station through streets whose sentiment was both +Italian and French, and where there was a yellowish cast in the gray of +the architecture which was almost Mantuan. They rested their +sensibilities, so bruised and fretted by Gothic angles and points, +against the smooth surfaces of the prevailing classicistic facades of the +houses as they passed, and when they arrived at their hotel, an old +mansion of Versailles type, fronting on a long irregular square planted +with pollard sycamores, they said that it might as well have been Lucca. + +The archway and stairway of the hotel were draped with the Bavarian +colors, and they were obscurely flattered to learn that Prince Leopold, +the brother of the Prince-Regent of the kingdom, had taken rooms there, +on his way to the manoeuvres at Nuremberg, and was momently expected with +his suite. They realized that they were not of the princely party, +however, when they were told that he had sole possession of the dining- +room, and they went out to another hotel, and had their supper in keeping +delightfully native. People seemed to come there to write their letters +and make up their accounts, as well as to eat their suppers; they called +for stationery like characters in old comedy, and the clatter of crockery +and the scratching of pens went on together; and fortune offered the +Marches a delicate reparation for their exclusion from their own hotel in +the cold popular reception of the prince which they got back just in time +to witness. A very small group of people, mostly women and boys, had +gathered to see him arrive, but there was no cheering or any sign of +public interest. Perhaps he personally merited none; he looked a dull, +sad man, with his plain, stubbed features; and after he had mounted to +his apartment, the officers of his staff stood quite across the landing, +and barred the passage of the Americans, ignoring even Mrs. March's +presence, as they talked together. + +"Well, my dear," said her husband, "here you have it at last. This is +what you've been living for, ever since we came to Germany. It's a great +moment." + +"Yes. What are you going to do?" + +"Who? I? Oh, nothing! This is your affair; it's for you to act." + +If she had been young, she might have withered them with a glance; she +doubted now if her dim eyes would have any such power; but she advanced +steadily upon them, and then the officers seemed aware of her, and stood +aside. + +March always insisted that they stood aside apologetically, but she held +as firmly that they stood aside impertinently, or at least indifferently, +and that the insult to her American womanhood was perfectly ideal. It is +true that nothing of the kind happened again during their stay at the +hotel; the prince's officers were afterwards about in the corridors and +on the stairs, but they offered no shadow of obstruction to her going and +coming, and the landlord himself was not so preoccupied with his +highhotes but he had time to express his grief that she had been obliged +to go out for supper. + +They satisfied the passion for the little obsolete capital which had been +growing upon them by strolling past the old Resident at an hour so +favorable for a first impression. It loomed in the gathering dusk even +vaster than it was, and it was really vast enough for the pride of a King +of France, much more a Margrave of Ansbach. Time had blackened and +blotched its coarse limestone walls to one complexion with the statues +swelling and strutting in the figure of Roman legionaries before it, and +standing out against the evening sky along its balustraded roof, and had +softened to the right tint the stretch of half a dozen houses with +mansard roofs and renaissance facades obsequiously in keeping with the +Versailles ideal of a Resident. In the rear, and elsewhere at fit +distance from its courts, a native architecture prevailed; and at no +great remove the Marches found themselves in a simple German town again. +There they stumbled upon a little bookseller's shop blinking in a quiet +corner, and bought three or four guides and small histories of Ansbach, +which they carried home, and studied between drowsing and waking. The +wonderful German syntax seems at its most enigmatical in this sort of +literature, and sometimes they lost themselves in its labyrinths +completely, and only made their way perilously out with the help of +cumulative declensions, past articles and adjectives blindly seeking +their nouns, to long-procrastinated verbs dancing like swamp-fires in the +distance. They emerged a little less ignorant than they went in, and +better qualified than they would otherwise have been for their second +visit to the Schloss, which they paid early the next morning. + +They were so early, indeed, that when they mounted from the great inner +court, much too big for Ansbach, if not for the building, and rung the +custodian's bell, a smiling maid who let them into an ante-room, where +she kept on picking over vegetables for her dinner, said the custodian +was busy, and could not be seen till ten o'clock. She seemed, in her +nook of the pretentious pile, as innocently unconscious of its history +as any hen-sparrow who had built her nest in some coign of its +architecture; and her friendly, peaceful domesticity remained a wholesome +human background to the tragedies and comedies of the past, and held them +in a picturesque relief in which they were alike tolerable and even +charming. + +The history of Ansbach strikes its roots in the soil of fable, and above +ground is a gnarled and twisted growth of good and bad from the time of +the Great Charles to the time of the Great Frederick. Between these +times she had her various rulers, ecclesiastical and secular, in various +forms of vassalage to the empire; but for nearly four centuries her +sovereignty was in the hands of the margraves, who reigned in a +constantly increasing splendor till the last sold her outright to the +King of Prussia in 1791, and went to live in England on the proceeds. +She had taken her part in the miseries and glories of the wars that +desolated Germany, but after the Reformation, when she turned from the +ancient faith to which she owed her cloistered origin under St. +Gumpertus, her people had peace except when their last prince sold them +to fight the battles of others. It is in this last transaction that her +history, almost in the moment when she ceased to have a history of her +own, links to that of the modern world, and that it came home to the +Marches in their national character; for two thousand of those poor +Ansbach mercenaries were bought up by England and sent to put down a +rebellion in her American colonies. + +Humanly, they were more concerned for the Last Margrave, because of +certain qualities which made him the Best Margrave, in spite of the +defects of his qualities. He was the son of the Wild Margrave, equally +known in the Ansbach annals, who may not have been the Worst Margrave, +but who had certainly a bad trick of putting his subjects to death +without trial, and in cases where there was special haste, with his own +hand. He sent his son to the university at Utrecht because he believed +that the republican influences in Holland would be wholesome for him, and +then he sent him to travel in Italy; but when the boy came home looking +frail and sick, the Wild Margrave charged his official travelling +companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer hanged without +process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his realm, for a +pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he had, at +various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows and bullets or +hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his clemency commuted +to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian who killed his hunting-dog, +he had broken alive on the wheel. A soldier's wife was hanged for +complicity in a case of desertion; a young soldier who eloped with the +girl he loved was brought to Ansbach from a neighboring town, and hanged +with her on the same gallows. A sentry at the door of one of the +Margrave's castles amiably complied with the Margrave's request to let +him take his gun for a moment, on the pretence of wishing to look at it. +For this breach of discipline the prince covered him with abuse and gave +him over to his hussars, who bound him to a horse's tail and dragged him +through the streets; he died of his injuries. The kennel-master who had +charge of the Margrave's dogs was accused of neglecting them: without +further inquiry the Margrave rode to the man's house and shot him down on +his own threshold. A shepherd who met the Margrave on a shying horse did +not get his flock out of the way quickly enough; the Margrave demanded +the pistols of a gentleman in his company, but he answered that they were +not loaded, and the shepherd's life was saved. As they returned home the +gentleman fired them off. "What does that mean?" cried the Margrave, +furiously. "It means, gracious lord, that you will sleep sweeter +tonight, for not having heard my pistols an hour sooner." + +From this it appears that the gracious lord had his moments of regret; +but perhaps it is not altogether strange that when he died, the whole +population "stormed through the streets to meet his funeral train, not in +awe-stricken silence to meditate on the fall of human grandeur, but to +unite in an eager tumult of rejoicing, as if some cruel brigand who had +long held the city in terror were delivered over to them bound and in +chains." For nearly thirty years this blood-stained miscreant had +reigned over his hapless people in a sovereign plenitude of power, which +by the theory of German imperialism in our day is still a divine right. + +They called him the Wild Margrave, in their instinctive revolt from the +belief that any man not untamably savage could be guilty of his +atrocities; and they called his son the Last Margrave, with a touch of +the poetry which perhaps records a regret for their extinction as a +state. He did not harry them as his father had done; his mild rule was +the effect partly of the indifference and distaste for his country bred, +by his long sojourns abroad; but doubtless also it was the effect of a +kindly nature. Even in the matter of selling a few thousands of them to +fight the battles of a bad cause on the other side of the world, he had +the best of motives, and faithfully applied the proceeds to the payment +of the state debt and the embellishment of the capital. + +His mother was a younger sister of Frederick the Great, and was so +constantly at war with her husband that probably she had nothing to do +with the marriage which the Wild Margrave forced upon their son. Love +certainly had nothing to do with it, and the Last Margrave early escaped +from it to the society of Mlle. Clairon, the great French tragedienne, +whom he met in Paris, and whom he persuaded to come and make her home +with him in Ansbach. She lived there seventeen years, and though always +an alien, she bore herself with kindness to all classes, and is still +remembered there by the roll of butter which calls itself a Klarungswecke +in its imperfect French. + +No roll of butter records in faltering accents the name of the brilliant +and disdainful English lady who replaced this poor tragic muse in the +Margrave's heart, though the lady herself lived to be the last Margravine +of Ansbach, where everybody seems to have hated her with a passion which +she doubtless knew how to return. She was the daughter of the Earl of +Berkeley, and the wife of Lord Craven, a sufficiently unfaithful and +unworthy nobleman by her account, from whom she was living apart when the +Margrave asked her to his capital. There she set herself to oust Mlle. +Clairon with sneers and jests for the theatrical style which the actress +could not outlive. Lady Craven said she was sure Clairon's nightcap must +be a crown of gilt paper; and when Clairon threatened to kill herself, +and the Margrave was alarmed, "You forget," said Lady Craven, "that +actresses only stab themselves under their sleeves." + +She drove Clairon from Ansbach, and the great tragedienne returned to +Paris, where she remained true to her false friend, and from time to time +wrote him letters full of magnanimous counsel and generous tenderness. +But she could not have been so good company as Lady Craven, who was a +very gifted person, and knew how to compose songs and sing them, and +write comedies and play them, and who could keep the Margrave amused in +many ways. When his loveless and childless wife died he married the +English woman, but he grew more and more weary of his dull little court +and his dull little country, and after a while, considering the uncertain +tenure sovereigns had of their heads since the French King had lost his, +and the fact that he had no heirs to follow him in his principality, he +resolved to cede it for a certain sum to Prussia. To this end his new +wife's urgence was perhaps not wanting. They went to England, where she +outlived him ten years, and wrote her memoirs. + +The custodian of the Schloss came at last, and the Marches saw instantly +that he was worth waiting for. He was as vainglorious of the palace as +any grand-monarching margrave of them all. He could not have been more +personally superb in showing their different effigies if they had been +his own family portraits, and he would not spare the strangers a single +splendor of the twenty vast, handsome, tiresome, Versailles-like rooms he +led them through. The rooms were fatiguing physically, but so poignantly +interesting that Mrs. March would not have missed, though she perished of +her pleasure, one of the things she saw. She had for once a surfeit of +highhoting in the pictures, the porcelains, the thrones and canopies, the +tapestries, the historical associations with the margraves and their +marriages, with the Great Frederick and the Great Napoleon. The Great +Napoleon's man Bernadotte made the Schloss his headquarters when he +occupied Ansbach after Austerlitz, and here he completed his arrangements +for taking her bargain from Prussia and handing it over to Bavaria, with +whom it still remains. Twice the Great Frederick had sojourned in the +palace; visiting his sister Louise, the wife of the Wild Margrave, and +more than once it had welcomed her next neighbor and sister Wilhelmina, +the Margravine of Baireuth, whose autobiographic voice, piercingly +plaintive and reproachful, seemed to quiver in the air. Here, oddly +enough, the spell of the Wild Margrave weakened in the presence of his +portrait, which signally failed to justify his fame of furious tyrant. +That seems, indeed, to have been rather the popular and historical +conception of him than the impression he made upon his exalted +contemporaries. The Margravine of Baireuth at any rate could so far +excuse her poor blood-stained brother-in-law as to say: "The Margrave of +Ansbach . . . was a young prince who had been very badly educated. +He continually ill-treated my sister; they led the life of cat and dog. +My sister, it is true, was sometimes in fault . . . . Her education +had been very bad. . . She was married at fourteen." + +At parting, the custodian told the Marches that he would easily have +known them for Americans by the handsome fee they gave him; they came +away flown with his praise; and their national vanity was again flattered +when they got out into the principal square of Ansbach. There, in a +bookseller's window, they found among the pamphlets teaching different +languages without a master, one devoted to the Amerikanische Sprache as +distinguished from the Englische Sprache. That there could be no +mistake, the cover was printed with colors in a German ideal of the star- +spangled banner; and March said he always knew that we had a language of +our own, and that now he was going in to buy that pamphlet and find out +what it was like. He asked the young shop-woman how it differed from +English, which she spoke fairly well from having lived eight years in +Chicago. She said that it differed from the English mainly in emphasis +and pronunciation. "For instance, the English say 'HALF past', and the +Americans 'Half PAST'; the English say 'laht' and the Americans say +'late'." + +The weather had now been clear quite long enough, and it was raining +again, a fine, bitter, piercing drizzle. They asked the girl if it +always rained in Ansbach; and she owned that it nearly always did. She +said that sometimes she longed for a little American summer; that it was +never quite warm in Ansbach; and when they had got out into the rain, +March said: "It was very nice to stumble on Chicago in an Ansbach book- +store. You ought to have told her you had a married daughter in Chicago. +Don't miss another such chance." + +"We shall need another bag if we keep on buying books at this rate," said +his wife with tranquil irrelevance; and not to give him time for protest; +she pushed him into a shop where the valises in the window perhaps +suggested her thought. March made haste to forestall her there by saying +they were Americans, but the mistress of the shop seemed to have her +misgivings, and "Born Americans, perhaps?" she ventured. She had +probably never met any but the naturalized sort, and supposed these were +the only sort. March re-assured her, and then she said she had a son +living in Jersey City, and she made March take his address that he might +tell him he had seen his mother; she had apparently no conception what a +great way Jersey City is from New York. + +Mrs. March would not take his arm when they came out. "Now, that is what +I never can get used to in you, Basil, and I've tried to palliate it for +twenty-seven years. You know you won't look up that poor woman's son! +Why did you let her think you would?" + +"How could I tell her I wouldn't? Perhaps I shall." + +"No, no! You never will. I know you're good and kind, and that's why I +can't understand your being so cruel. When we get back, how will you +ever find time to go over to Jersey City?" + +He could not tell, but at last he said: "I'll tell you what! You must +keep me up to it. You know how much you enjoy making me do my duty, and +this will be such a pleasure!" + +She laughed forlornly, but after a moment she took his arm; and he began, +from the example of this good mother, to philosophize the continuous +simplicity and sanity of the people of Ansbach under all their civic +changes. Saints and soldiers, knights and barons, margraves, princes, +kings, emperors, had come and gone, and left their single-hearted, +friendly subjectfolk pretty much what they found them. The people had +suffered and survived through a thousand wars, and apparently prospered +on under all governments and misgovernments. When the court was most +French, most artificial, most vicious, the citizen life must have +remained immutably German, dull, and kind. After all, he said, humanity +seemed everywhere to be pretty safe, and pretty much the same. + +"Yes, that is all very well," she returned, "and you can theorize +interestingly enough; but I'm afraid that poor mother, there, had no more +reality for you than those people in the past. You appreciate her as a +type, and you don't care for her as a human being. You're nothing but a +dreamer, after all. I don't blame you," she went on. "It's your +temperament, and you can't change, now." + +"I may change for the worse," he threatened. "I think I have, already. +I don't believe I could stand up to Dryfoos, now, as I did for poor old +Lindau, when I risked your bread and butter for his. I look back in +wonder and admiration at myself. I've steadily lost touch with life +since then. I'm a trifler, a dilettante, and an amateur of the right and +the good as I used to be when I was young. Oh, I have the grace to be +troubled at times, now, and once I never was. It never occurred to me +then that the world wasn't made to interest me, or at the best to +instruct me, but it does, now, at times." + +She always came to his defence when he accused himself; it was the best +ground he could take with her. "I think you behaved very well with +Burnamy. You did your duty then." + +"Did I? I'm not so sure. At any rate, it's the last time I shall do it. +I've served my term. I think I should tell him that he was all right in +that business with Stoller, if I were to meet him, now." + +"Isn't it strange," she said, provisionally, "that we don't come upon a +trace of him anywhere in Ansbach?" + +"Ah, you've been hoping he would turn up!" + +"Yes. I don't deny it. I feel very unhappy about him." + +"I don't. He's too much like me. He would have been quite capable of +promising that poor woman to look up her son in Jersey City. When I +think of that, I have no patience with Burnamy." + +"I am going to ask the landlord about him, now he's got rid of his +highhotes," said Mrs. March. + + + + +XLIX. + +They went home to their hotel for their midday dinner, and to the comfort +of having it nearly all to themselves. Prince Leopold had risen early, +like all the hard-working potentates of the continent, and got away to +the manoeuvres somewhere at six o'clock; the decorations had been +removed, and the court-yard where the hired coach and pair of the prince +had rolled in the evening before had only a few majestic ducks waddling +about in it and quacking together, indifferent to the presence of a +yellow mail-wagon, on which the driver had been apparently dozing till +the hour of noon should sound. He sat there immovable, but at the last +stroke of the clock he woke up and drove vigorously away to the station. + +The dining-room which they had been kept out of by the prince the night +before was not such as to embitter the sense of their wrong by its +splendor. After all, the tastes of royalty must be simple, if the prince +might have gone to the Schloss and had chosen rather to stay at this +modest hotel; but perhaps the Schloss was reserved for more immediate +royalty than the brothers of prince-regents; and in that case he could +not have done better than dine at the Golden Star. If he paid no more +than two marks, he dined as cheaply as a prince could wish, and as +abundantly. The wine at Ansbach was rather thin and sour, but the bread, +March declared, was the best bread in the whole world, not excepting the +bread of Carlsbad. + +After dinner the Marches had some of the local pastry, not so +incomparable as the bread, with their coffee, which they had served them +in a pavilion of the beautiful garden remaining to the hotel from the +time when it was a patrician mansion. The garden had roses in it and +several sorts of late summer flowers, as well as ripe cherries, currants, +grapes, and a Virginia-creeper red with autumn, all harmoniously +contemporaneous, as they might easily be in a climate where no one of the +seasons can very well know itself from the others. It had not been +raining for half an hour, and the sun was scalding hot, so that the +shelter of their roof was very grateful, and the puddles of the paths +were drying up with the haste which puddles have to make in Germany, +between rains, if they are ever going to dry up at all. + +The landlord came out to see if they were well served, and he was +sincerely obliging in the English he had learned as a waiter in London. +Mrs. March made haste to ask him if a young American of the name of +Burnamy had been staying with him a few weeks before; and she described +Burnamy's beauty and amiability so vividly that the landlord, if he had +been a woman, could not have failed to remember him. But he failed, with +a real grief, apparently, and certainly a real politeness, to recall +either his name or his person. The landlord was an intelligent, good- +looking young fellow; he told them that he was lately married, and they +liked him so much that they were sorry to see him afterwards privately +boxing the ears of the piccolo, the waiter's little understudy. Perhaps +the piccolo deserved it, but they would rather not have witnessed his +punishment; his being in a dress-coat seemed to make it also an +indignity. + +In the late afternoon they went to the cafe in the old Orangery of the +Schloss for a cup of tea, and found themselves in the company of several +Ansbach ladies who had brought their work, in the evident habit of coming +there every afternoon for their coffee and for a dish of gossip. They +were kind, uncomely, motherly-looking bodies; one of them combed her hair +at the table; and they all sat outside of the cafe with their feet on the +borders of the puddles which had not dried up there in the shade of the +building. + +A deep lawn, darkened at its farther edge by the long shadows of trees, +stretched before them with the sunset light on it, and it was all very +quiet and friendly. The tea brought to the Marches was brewed from some +herb apparently of native growth, with bits of what looked like willow +leaves in it, but it was flavored with a clove in each cup, and they sat +contentedly over it and tried to make out what the Ansbach ladies were, +talking about. These had recognized the strangers for Americans, and one +of them explained that Americans spoke the same language as the English +and yet were not quite the same people. + +"She differs from the girl in the book-store," said March, translating to +his wife. "Let us get away before she says that we are not so nice as +the English," and they made off toward the avenue of trees beyond the +lawn. + +There were a few people walking up and down in the alley, making the most +of the moment of dry weather. They saluted one another like +acquaintances, and three clean-shaven, walnut-faced old peasants bowed in +response to March's stare, with a self-respectful civility. They were +yeomen of the region of Ansbach, where the country round about is dotted +with their cottages, and not held in vast homeless tracts by the nobles +as in North Germany. + +The Bavarian who had imparted this fact to March at breakfast, not +without a certain tacit pride in it to the disadvantage of the Prussians, +was at the supper table, and was disposed to more talk, which he managed +in a stout, slow English of his own. He said he had never really spoken +English with an English-speaking person before, or at all since he +studied it in school at Munich. + +"I should be afraid to put my school-boy German against your English," +March said, and, when he had understood, the other laughed for pleasure, +and reported the compliment to his wife in their own parlance. "You +Germans certainly beat us in languages." + +"Oh, well," he retaliated, "the Americans beat us in some other things," +and Mrs. March felt that this was but just; she would have liked to +mention a few, but not ungraciously; she and the German lady kept smiling +across the table, and trying detached vocables of their respective +tongues upon each other. + +The Bavarian said he lived in Munich still, but was in Ansbach on an +affair of business; he asked March if he were not going to see the +manoeuvres somewhere. Till now the manoeuvres had merely been the +interesting background of their travel; but now, hearing that the Emperor +of Germany, the King of Saxony, the Regent of Bavaria, and the King of +Wurtemberg, the Grand-Dukes of Weimar and Baden, with visiting potentates +of all sorts, and innumerable lesser highhotes, foreign and domestic, +were to be present, Mrs. March resolved that they must go to at least one +of the reviews. + +"If you go to Frankfort, you can see the King of Italy too," said the +Bavarian, but he owned that they probably could not get into a hotel +there, and he asked why they should not go to Wurzburg, where they could +see all the sovereigns except the King of Italy. + +"Wurzburg? Wurzburg?" March queried of his wife. "Where did we hear of +that place?" + +"Isn't it where Burnamy said Mr. Stoller had left his daughters at +school?" + +"So it is! And is that on the way to the Rhine?" he asked the Bavarian. + +"No, no! Wurzburg is on the Main, about five hours from Ansbach. And it +is a very interesting place. It is where the good wine comes from." + +"Oh, yes," said March, and in their rooms his wife got out all their +guides and maps and began to inform herself and to inform him about +Wurzburg. But first she said it was very cold and he must order some +fire made in the tall German stove in their parlor. The maid who came +said "Gleich," but she did not come back, and about the time they were +getting furious at her neglect, they began getting warm. He put his hand +on the stove and found it hot; then he looked down for a door in the +stove where he might shut a damper; there was no door. + +"Good heavens!" he shouted. "It's like something in a dream," and he ran +to pull the bell for help. + +"No, no! Don't ring! It will make us ridiculous. They'll think +Americans don't know anything. There must be some way of dampening the +stove; and if there isn't, I'd rather suffocate than give myself away." +Mrs. March ran and opened the window, while her husband carefully +examined the stove at every point, and explored the pipe for the damper +in vain. "Can't you find it?" The night wind came in raw and damp, and +threatened to blow their lamp out, and she was obliged to shut the +window. + +"Not a sign of it. I will go down and ask the landlord in strict +confidence how they dampen their stoves in Ansbach." + +"Well, if you must. It's getting hotter every moment." She followed him +timorously into the corridor, lit by a hanging lamp, turned low for the +night. + +He looked at his watch; it was eleven o'clock. "I'm afraid they're all +in bed." + +"Yes; you mustn't go! We must try to find out for ourselves. What can +that door be for?" + +It was a low iron door, half the height of a man, in the wall near their +room, and it yielded to his pull. "Get a candle," he whispered, and when +she brought it, he stooped to enter the doorway. + +"Oh, do you think you'd better?" she hesitated. + +"You can come, too, if you're afraid. You've always said you wanted to +die with me." + +"Well. But you go first." + +He disappeared within, and then came back to the doorway. "Just come in +here, a moment." She found herself in a sort of antechamber, half the +height of her own room, and following his gesture she looked down where +in one corner some crouching monster seemed showing its fiery teeth in a +grin of derision. This grin was the damper of their stove, and this was +where the maid had kindled the fire which had been roasting them alive, +and was still joyously chuckling to itself. "I think that Munich man was +wrong. I don't believe we beat the Germans in anything. There isn't a +hotel in the United States where the stoves have no front doors, and +every one of them has the space of a good-sized flat given up to the +convenience of kindling a fire in it." + + + + +L. + +After a red sunset of shameless duplicity March was awakened to a rainy +morning by the clinking of cavalry hoofs on the pavement of the long- +irregular square before the hotel, and he hurried out to see the passing +of the soldiers on their way to the manoeuvres. They were troops of all +arms, but mainly infantry, and as they stumped heavily through the groups +of apathetic citizens in their mud-splashed boots, they took the steady +downpour on their dripping helmets. Some of them were smoking, but none +smiling, except one gay fellow who made a joke to a serving-maid on the +sidewalk. An old officer halted his staff to scold a citizen who had +given him a mistaken direction. The shame of the erring man was great, +and the pride of a fellow-citizen who corrected him was not less, though +the arrogant brute before whom they both cringed used them with equal +scorn; the younger officers listened indifferently round on horseback +behind the glitter of their eyeglasses, and one of them amused himself by +turning the silver bangles on his wrist. + +Then the files of soldier slaves passed on, and March crossed the bridge +spanning the gardens in what had been the city moat, and found his way to +the market-place, under the walls of the old Gothic church of St. +Gumpertus. The market, which spread pretty well over the square, seemed +to be also a fair, with peasants' clothes and local pottery for sale, +as well as fruits and vegetables, and large baskets of flowers, with old +women squatting before them. It was all as picturesque as the markets +used to be in Montreal and Quebec, and in a cloudy memory of his wedding +journey long before, he bought so lavishly of the flowers to carry back +to his wife that a little girl, who saw his arm-load from her window as +he returned, laughed at him, and then drew shyly back. Her laugh +reminded him how many happy children he had seen in Germany, and how +freely they seemed to play everywhere, with no one to make them afraid. +When they grow up the women laugh as little as the men, whose rude toil +the soldiering leaves them to. + +He got home with his flowers, and his wife took them absently, and made +him join her in watching the sight which had fascinated her in the street +under their windows. A slender girl, with a waist as slim as a corseted +officer's, from time to time came out of the house across the way to the +firewood which had been thrown from a wagon upon the sidewalk there. +Each time she embraced several of the heavy four-foot logs and +disappeared with them in-doors. Once she paused from her work to joke +with a well-dressed man who came by; and seemed to find nothing odd in +her work; some gentlemen lounging at the window over head watched her +with no apparent sense of anomaly. + +"What do you think of that?" asked Mrs. March. "I think it's good +exercise for the girl, and I should like to recommend it to those fat +fellows at the window. I suppose she'll saw the wood in the cellar, and +then lug it up stairs, and pile it up in the stoves' dressing-rooms." + +"Don't laugh! It's too disgraceful." + +"Well, I don't know! If you like, I'll offer these gentlemen across the +way your opinion of it in the language of Goethe and Schiller." + +"I wish you'd offer my opinion of them. They've been staring in here +with an opera-glass." + +"Ah, that's a different affair. There isn't much going on in Ansbach, +and they have to make the most of it." + +The lower casements of the houses were furnished with mirrors set at +right angles with them, and nothing which went on in the streets was +lost. Some of the streets were long and straight, and at rare moments +they lay full of sun. At such times the Marches were puzzled by the +sight of citizens carrying open umbrellas, and they wondered if they had +forgotten to put them down, or thought it not worth while in the brief +respites from the rain, or were profiting by such rare occasions to dry +them; and some other sights remained baffling to the last. Once a man +with his hands pinioned before him, and a gendarme marching stolidly +after him with his musket on his shoulder, passed under their windows; +but who he was, or what he, had done, or was to suffer, they never knew. +Another time a pair went by on the way to the railway station: a young +man carrying an umbrella under his arm, and a very decent-looking old +woman lugging a heavy carpet bag, who left them to the lasting question +whether she was the young man's servant in her best clothes, or merely +his mother. + +Women do not do everything in Ansbach, however, the sacristans being men, +as the Marches found when they went to complete their impression of the +courtly past of the city by visiting the funeral chapel of the margraves +in the crypt of St. Johannis Church. In the little ex-margravely capital +there was something of the neighborly interest in the curiosity of +strangers which endears Italian witness. The white-haired street-sweeper +of Ansbach, who willingly left his broom to guide them to the house of +the sacristan, might have been a street-sweeper in Vicenza; and the old +sacristan, when he put his velvet skull-cap out of an upper window and +professed his willingness to show them the chapel, disappointed them by +saying "Gleich!" instead of "Subito!" The architecture of the houses was +a party to the illusion. St. Johannis, like the older church of St. +Gumpertus, is Gothic, with the two unequal towers which seem distinctive +of Ansbach; at the St. Gumpertus end of the place where they both stand +the dwellings are Gothic too, and might be in Hamburg; but at the St. +Johannis end they seem to have felt the exotic spirit of the court, and +are of a sort of Teutonized renaissance. + +The rococo margraves and margravines used of course to worship in St. +Johannis Church. Now they all, such as did not marry abroad, lie in the +crypt of the church, in caskets of bronze and copper and marble, with +draperies of black samite, more and more funereally vainglorious to the +last. Their courtly coffins are ranged in a kind of hemicycle, with the +little coffins of the children that died before they came to the +knowledge of their greatness. On one of these a kneeling figurine in +bronze holds up the effigy of the child within; on another the epitaph +plays tenderly with the fate of a little princess, who died in her first +year. + + In the Rose-month was this sweet Rose taken. + For the Rose-kind hath she earth forsaken. + The Princess is the Rose, that here no longer blows. + From the stem by death's hand rudely shaken. + Then rest in the Rose-house. + Little Princess-Rosebud dear! + There life's Rose shall bloom again + In Heaven's sunshine clear. + +While March struggled to get this into English words, two German ladies, +who had made themselves of his party, passed reverently away and left him +to pay the sacristan alone. + +"That is all right," he said, when he came out. "I think we got the most +value; and they didn't look as if they could afford it so well; though +you never can tell, here. These ladies may be the highest kind of +highhotes practising a praiseworthy economy. I hope the lesson won't be +lost on us. They have saved enough by us for their coffee at the +Orangery. Let us go and have a little willow-leaf tea!" + +The Orangery perpetually lured them by what it had kept of the days when +an Orangery was essential to the self-respect of every sovereign prince, +and of so many private gentlemen. On their way they always passed the +statue of Count Platen, the dull poet whom Heine's hate would have +delivered so cruelly over to an immortality of contempt, but who stands +there near the Schloss in a grass-plot prettily planted with flowers, and +ignores his brilliant enemy in the comfortable durability of bronze; and +there always awaited them in the old pleasaunce the pathos of Kaspar +Hauser's fate; which his murder affixes to it with a red stain. + +After their cups of willow leaves at the cafe they went up into that nook +of the plantation where the simple shaft of church-warden's Gothic +commemorates the assassination on the spot where it befell. Here the +hapless youth, whose mystery will never be fathomed on earth, used to +come for a little respite from his harsh guardian in Ansbach, homesick +for the kindness of his Nuremberg friends; and here his murderer found +him and dealt him the mortal blow. + +March lingered upon the last sad circumstance of the tragedy in which the +wounded boy dragged himself home, to suffer the suspicion and neglect of +his guardian till death attested his good faith beyond cavil. He said +this was the hardest thing to bear in all his story, and that he would +like to have a look into the soul of the dull, unkind wretch who had so +misread his charge. He was going on with an inquiry that pleased him +much, when his wife pulled him abruptly away. + +"Now, I see, you are yielding to the fascination of it, and you are +wanting to take the material from Burnamy!" + +"Oh, well, let him have the material; he will spoil it. And I can always +reject it, if he offers it to 'Every Other Week'." + +"I could believe, after your behavior to that poor woman about her son in +Jersey City, you're really capable of it." + +"What comprehensive inculpation! I had forgotten about that poor woman." + + + + +LI. + +The letters which March had asked his Nuremberg banker to send them came +just as they were leaving Ansbach. The landlord sent them down to the +station, and Mrs. March opened them in the train, and read them first so +that she could prepare him if there were anything annoying in them, as +well as indulge her livelier curiosity. + +"They're from both the children," she said, without waiting for him to +ask. "You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from Mrs. +Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you." Then she +hesitated, with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. "And there's +one from Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of." She +delayed again, and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a +sort of impassioned patience while he read it. + +He read it, and gave it back to her. "There doesn't seem to be very much +in it." + +"That's it! Don't you think I had a right to there being something in +it, after all I did for her?" + +"I always hoped you hadn't done anything for her, but if you have, why +should she give herself away on paper? It's a very proper letter." + +"It's a little too proper, and it's the last I shall have to do with her. +She knew that I should be on pins and needles till I heard how her father +had taken Burnamy's being there, that night, and she doesn't say a word +about it." + +"The general may have had a tantrum that she couldn't describe. Perhaps +she hasn't told him, yet." + +"She would tell him instantly!" cried Mrs. March who began to find +reason in the supposition, as well as comfort for the hurt which the +girl's reticence had given her. "Or if she wouldn't, it would be because +she was waiting for the best chance." + +"That would be like the wise daughter of a difficult father. She may be +waiting for the best chance to say how he took it. No, I'm all for Miss +Triscoe, and I hope that now, if she's taken herself off our hands, +she'll keep off." + +"It's altogether likely that he's made her promise not to tell me +anything about it," Mrs. March mused aloud. + +"That would be unjust to a person who had behaved so discreetly as you +have," said her husband. + +They were on their way to Wurzburg, and at the first station, which was a +junction, a lady mounted to their compartment just before the train began +to move. She was stout and middle-aged, and had never been pretty, but +she bore herself with a kind of authority in spite of her thread gloves, +her dowdy gray travelling-dress, and a hat of lower middle-class English +tastelessness. She took the only seat vacant, a backward-riding place +beside a sleeping passenger who looked like a commercial traveller, but +she seemed ill at ease in it, and March offered her his seat. She +accepted it very promptly, and thanked him for it in the English of a +German, and Mrs. March now classed her as a governess who had been +teaching in England and had acquired the national feeling for dress. +But in this character she found her interesting, and even a little +pathetic, and she made her some overtures of talk which the other met +eagerly enough. They were now running among low hills, not so +picturesque as those between Eger and Nuremberg, but of much the same +toylike quaintness in the villages dropped here and there in their +valleys. One small town, completely walled, with its gray houses and red +roofs, showed through the green of its trees and gardens so like a +colored print in a child's story-book that Mrs. March cried out for joy +in it, and then accounted for her rapture by explaining to the stranger +that they were Americans and had never been in Germany before. The lady +was not visibly affected by the fact, she said casually that she had +often been in that little town, which she named; her uncle had a castle +in the country back of it, and she came with her husband for the shooting +in the autumn. By a natural transition she spoke of her children, for +whom she had an English governess; she said she had never been in +England, but had learnt the language from a governess in her own +childhood; and through it all Mrs. March perceived that she was trying to +impress them with her consequence. To humor her pose, she said they had +been looking up the scene of Kaspar Hauser's death at Ansbach; and at +this the stranger launched into such intimate particulars concerning him, +and was so familiar at first hands with the facts of his life, that Mrs. +March let her run on, too much amused with her pretensions to betray any +doubt of her. She wondered if March were enjoying it all as much, and +from time to time she tried to catch his eye, while the lady talked +constantly and rather loudly, helping herself out with words from them +both when her English failed her. In the safety of her perfect +understanding of the case, Mrs. March now submitted farther, and even +suffered some patronage from her, which in another mood she would have +met with a decided snub. + +As they drew in among the broad vine-webbed slopes of the Wurzburg, +hills, the stranger said she was going to change there, and take a train +on to Berlin. Mrs. March wondered whether she would be able to keep up +the comedy to the last; and she had to own that she carried it off very +easily when the friends whom she was expecting did not meet her on the +arrival of their train. She refused March's offers of help, and remained +quietly seated while he got out their wraps and bags. She returned with +a hardy smile the cold leave Mrs. March took of her; and when a porter +came to the door, and forced his way by the Marches, to ask with anxious +servility if she, were the Baroness von-----, she bade the man get them. +a 'traeger', and then come back for her. She waved them a complacent +adieu before they mixed with the crowd and lost sight of her. + +"Well, my dear," said March, addressing the snobbishness in his wife +which he knew to be so wholly impersonal, "you've mingled with one +highhote, anyway. I must say she didn't look it, any more than the Duke +and Duchess of Orleans, and yet she's only a baroness. Think of our +being three hours in the same compartment, and she doing all she could to +impress us and our getting no good of it! I hoped you were feeling her +quality, so that we should have it in the family, anyway, and always know +what it was like. But so far, the highhotes have all been terribly +disappointing." + +He teased on as they followed the traeger with their baggage out of the +station; and in the omnibus on the way to their hotel, he recurred to the +loss they had suffered in the baroness's failure to dramatize her +nobility effectually. "After all, perhaps she was as much disappointed +in us. I don't suppose we looked any more like democrats than she looked +like an aristocrat." + +"But there's a great difference," Mrs. March returned at last. "It isn't +at all a parallel case. We were not real democrats, and she was a real +aristocrat." + +"To be sure. There is that way of looking at it. That's rather novel; I +wish I had thought of that myself. She was certainly more to blame than +we were." + + + + +LII. + +The square in front of the station was planted with flag-poles wreathed +in evergreens; a triumphal arch was nearly finished, and a colossal +allegory in imitation bronze was well on the way to completion, in honor +of the majesties who were coming for the manoeuvres. The streets which +the omnibus passed through to the Swan Inn were draped with the imperial +German and the royal Bavarian colors; and the standards of the visiting +nationalities decked the fronts of the houses where their military +attaches were lodged; but the Marches failed to see our own banner, and +were spared for the moment the ignominy of finding it over an apothecary +shop in a retired avenue. The sun had come out, the sky overhead was of +a smiling blue; and they felt the gala-day glow and thrill in the depths +of their inextinguishable youth. + +The Swan Inn sits on one of the long quays bordering the Main, and its +windows look down upon the bridges and shipping of the river; but the +traveller reaches it by a door in the rear, through an archway into a +back street, where an odor dating back to the foundation of the city is +waiting to welcome him. + +The landlord was there, too, and he greeted the Marches so cordially that +they fully partook his grief in being able to offer them rooms on the +front of the house for two nights only. They reconciled themselves to +the necessity of then turning out for the staff of the King of Saxony, +the more readily because they knew that there was no hope of better +things at any other hotel. + +The rooms which they could have for the time were charming, and they came +down to supper in a glazed gallery looking out on the river picturesque +with craft of all fashions: with row-boats, sail-boats, and little +steamers, but mainly with long black barges built up into houses in the +middle, and defended each by a little nervous German dog. Long rafts of +logs weltered in the sunset red which painted the swift current, and +mantled the immeasurable vineyards of the hills around like the color of +their ripening grapes. Directly in face rose a castled steep, which kept +the ranging walls and the bastions and battlements of the time when such +a stronghold could have defended the city from foes without or from +tumult within. The arches of a stately bridge spanned the river +sunsetward, and lifted a succession of colossal figures against the +crimson sky. + +"I guess we have been wasting our time, my dear," said March, as they, +turned from this beauty to the question of supper. "I wish we had always +been here!" + +Their waiter had put them at a table in a division of the gallery beyond +that which they entered, where some groups of officers were noisily +supping. There was no one in their room but a man whose face was +indistinguishable against the light, and two young girls who glanced at +them with looks at once quelled and defiant, and then after a stare at +the officers in the gallery beyond, whispered together with suppressed +giggling. The man fed on without noticing them, except now and then to +utter a growl that silenced the whispering and giggling for a moment. +The Marches, from no positive evidence of any sense, decided that they +were Americans. + +"I don't know that I feel responsible for them as their fellow- +countryman; I should, once," he said. + +"It isn't that. It's the worry of trying to make out why they are just +what they are," his wife returned. + +The girls drew the man's attention to them and he looked at them for the +first time; then after a sort of hesitation he went on with his supper. +They had only begun theirs when he rose with the two girls, whom Mrs. +March now saw to be of the same size and dressed alike, and came heavily +toward them. + +"I thought you was in Carlsbad," he said bluntly to March, with a nod at +Mrs. March. He added, with a twist of his head toward the two girls, +"My daughters," and then left them to her, while he talked on with her +husband. "Come to see this foolery, I suppose. I'm on my way to the +woods for my after-cure; but I thought I might as well stop and give the +girls a chance; they got a week's vacation, anyway." Stoller glanced at +them with a sort of troubled tenderness in his strong dull face. + +"Oh, yes. I understood they were at school here," said March, and he +heard one of them saying, in a sweet, high pipe to his wife: + +"Ain't it just splendid? I ha'n't seen anything equal to it since the +Worrld's Fairr." She spoke with a strong contortion of the Western r, +and her sister hastened to put in: + +"I don't think it's to be compared with the Worrld's Fairr. But these +German girls, here, just think it's great. It just does me good to laff +at 'em, about it. I like to tell 'em about the electric fountain and the +Courrt of Iionorr when they get to talkin' about the illuminations +they're goun' to have. You goun' out to the parade? You better engage +your carriage right away if you arre. The carrs'll be a perfect jam. +Father's engaged ourrs; he had to pay sixty marrks forr it." + +They chattered on without shyness and on as easy terms with a woman of +three times their years as if she had been a girl of their own age; they +willingly took the whole talk to themselves, and had left her quite +outside of it before Stoller turned to her. + +"I been telling Mr. March here that you better both come to the parade +with us. I guess my twospanner will hold five; or if it won't, we'll +make it. I don't believe there's a carriage left in Wurzburg; and if you +go in the cars, you'll have to walk three or four miles before you get to +the parade-ground. You think it over," he said to March. "Nobody else +is going to have the places, anyway, and you can say yes at the last +minute just as well as now." + +He moved off with his girls, who looked over their shoulders at the +officers as they passed on through the adjoining room. + +"My dear!" cried Mrs. March. "Didn't you suppose he classed us with +Burnamy in that business? Why should he be polite to us?" + +"Perhaps he wants you to chaperon his daughters. He's probably heard of +your performance at the Kurhaus ball. But he knows that I thought +Burnamy in the wrong. This may be Stoller's way of wiping out an +obligation. Wouldn't you like to go with him?" + +"The mere thought of his being in the same town is prostrating. I'd far +rather he hated us; then he would avoid us." + +"Well, he doesn't own the town, and if it comes to the worst, perhaps we +can avoid him. Let us go out, anyway, and see if we can't." + +"No, no; I'm too tired; but you go. And get all the maps and guides you +can; there's so very little in Baedeker, and almost nothing in that great +hulking Bradshaw of yours; and I'm sure there must be the most +interesting history of Wurzburg. Isn't it strange that we haven't the +slightest association with the name?" + +"I've been rummaging in my mind, and I've got hold of an association at +last," said March. "It's beer; a sign in a Sixth Avenue saloon window +Wurzburger Hof-Brau." + +"No matter if it is beer. Find some sketch of the history, and we'll try +to get away from the Stollers in it. I pitied those wild girls, too. +What crazy images of the world must fill their empty minds! How their +ignorant thoughts must go whirling out into the unknown! I don't envy +their father. Do hurry back! I shall be thinking about them every +instant till you come." + +She said this, but in their own rooms it was so soothing to sit looking +through the long twilight at the lovely landscape that the sort of bruise +given by their encounter with the Stollers had left her consciousness +before March returned. She made him admire first the convent church on a +hill further up the river which exactly balanced the fortress in front of +them, and then she seized upon the little books he had brought, and set +him to exploring the labyrinths of their German, with a mounting +exultation in his discoveries. There was a general guide to the city, +and a special guide, with plans and personal details of the approaching +manoeuvres and the princes who were to figure in them; and there was a +sketch of the local history: a kind of thing that the Germans know how to +write particularly, well, with little gleams of pleasant humor blinking +through it. For the study of this, Mrs. March realized, more and more +passionately, that they were in the very most central and convenient +point, for the history of Wurzburg might be said to have begun with her +prince-bishops, whose rule had begun in the twelfth century, and who had +built, on a forgotten Roman work, the fortress of the Marienburg on that +vineyarded hill over against the Swan Inn. There had of course been +history before that, but 'nothing so clear, nothing so peculiarly swell, +nothing that so united the glory of this world and the next as that of +the prince-bishops. They had made the Marienburg their home, and kept it +against foreign and domestic foes for five hundred years. Shut within +its well-armed walls they had awed the often-turbulent city across the +Main; they had held it against the embattled farmers in the Peasants' +War, and had splendidly lost it to Gustavus Adolphus, and then got it +back again and held it till Napoleon took it from them. He gave it with +their flock to the Bavarians, who in turn briefly yielded it to the +Prussians in 1866, and were now in apparently final possession of it. + +Before the prince-bishops, Charlemagne and Barbarossa had come and gone, +and since the prince-bishops there had been visiting thrones and kingdoms +enough in the ancient city, which was soon to be illustrated by the +presence of imperial Germany, royal, Wirtemberg and Saxony, grand-ducal +Baden and Weimar, and a surfeit of all the minor potentates among those +who speak the beautiful language of the Ja. + +But none of these could dislodge the prince-bishops from that supreme +place which they had at once taken in Mrs. March's fancy. The potentates +were all going to be housed in the vast palace which the prince-bishops +had built themselves in Wurzburg as soon as they found it safe to come +down from their stronghold of Marienburg, and begin to adorn their city, +and to confirm it in its intense fidelity to the Church. Tiepolo had +come up out of Italy to fresco their palace, where he wrought year after +year, in that worldly taste which has somehow come to express the most +sovereign moment of ecclesiasticism. It prevailed so universally in +Wurzburg that it left her with the name of the Rococo City, intrenched in +a period of time equally remote from early Christianity and modern +Protestantism. Out of her sixty thousand souls, only ten thousand are +now of the reformed religion, and these bear about the same relation to +the Catholic spirit of the place that the Gothic architecture bears to +the baroque. + +As long as the prince-bishops lasted the Wurzburgers got on very well +with but one newspaper, and perhaps the smallest amount of merrymaking +known outside of the colony of Massachusetts Bay at the same epoch. The +prince-bishops had their finger in everybody's pie, and they portioned +out the cakes and ale, which were made according to formulas of their +own. The distractions were all of a religious character; churches, +convents, monasteries, abounded; ecclesiastical processions and +solemnities were the spectacles that edified if they did not amuse the +devout population. + +It seemed to March an ironical outcome of all this spiritual severity +that one of the greatest modern scientific discoveries should have been +made in Wurzburg, and that the Roentgen rays should now be giving her +name a splendor destined to eclipse the glories of her past. + +Mrs. March could not allow that they would do so; or at least that the +name of Roentgen would ever lend more lustre to his city than that of +Longfellow's Walther von der Vogelweide. She was no less surprised than +pleased to realize that this friend of the birds was a Wurzburger, and +she said that their first pilgrimage in the morning should be to the +church where he lies buried. + + + + +LIII. + +March went down to breakfast not quite so early as his wife had planned, +and left her to have her coffee in her room. He got a pleasant table in +the gallery overlooking the river, and he decided that the landscape, +though it now seemed to be rather too much studied from a drop-certain, +had certainly lost nothing of its charm in the clear morning light. The +waiter brought his breakfast, and after a little delay came back with a +card which he insisted was for March. It was not till he put on his +glasses and read the name of Mr. R. M. Kenby that he was able at all to +agree with the waiter, who stood passive at his elbow. + +"Well," he said, "why wasn't this card sent up last night?" + +The waiter explained that the gentleman had just, given him his card, +after asking March's nationality, and was then breakfasting in the next +room. March caught up his napkin and ran round the partition wall, and +Kenby rose with his napkin and hurried to meet him. + +"I thought it must be you," he called out, joyfully, as they struck their +extended hands together, "but so many people look alike, nowadays, that I +don't trust my eyes any more." + +Kenby said he had spent the time since they last met partly in Leipsic +and partly in Gotha, where he had amused himself in rubbing up his rusty +German. As soon as he realized that Wurzburg was so near he had slipped +down from Gotha for a glimpse of the manoeuvres. He added that he +supposed March was there to see them, and he asked with a quite +unembarrassed smile if they had met Mr. Adding in Carlsbad, and without +heeding March's answer, he laughed and added: "Of course, I know she must +have told Mrs. March all about it." + +March could not deny this; he laughed, too; though in his wife's absence +he felt bound to forbid himself anything more explicit. + +"I don't give it up, you know," Kenby went on, with perfect ease. "I'm +not a young fellow, if you call thirty-nine old." + +"At my age I don't," March put in, and they roared together, in men's +security from the encroachments of time. + +"But she happens to be the only woman I've ever really wanted to marry, +for more than a few days at a stretch. You know how it is with us." + +"Oh, yes, I know," said March, and they shouted again. + +"We're in love, and we're out of love, twenty times. But this isn't a +mere fancy; it's a conviction. And there's no reason why she shouldn't +marry me." + +March smiled gravely, and his smile was not lost upon Kenby. "You mean +the boy," he said. "Well, I like Rose," and now March really felt swept +from his feet. "She doesn't deny that she likes me, but she seems to +think that her marrying again will take her from him; the fact is, it +will only give me to him. As for devoting her whole life to him, she +couldn't do a worse thing for him. What the boy needs is a man's care, +and a man's will--Good heavens! You don't think I could ever be unkind +to the little soul?" Kenby threw himself forward over the table. + +"My dear fellow!" March protested. + +"I'd rather cut off my right hand! "Kenby pursued, excitedly, and then +he said, with a humorous drop: "The fact is, I don't believe I should +want her so much if I couldn't have Rose too. I want to have them both. +So far, I've only got no for an answer; but I'm not going to keep it. +I had a letter from Rose at Carlsbad, the other day; and--" + +The waiter came forward with a folded scrap of paper on his salver, which +March knew must be from his wife. "What is keeping you so?" she wrote. +"I am all ready." "It's from Mrs. March," he explained to Kenby. "I am +going out with her on some errands. I'm awfully glad to see you again. +We must talk it all over, and you must--you mustn't--Mrs. March will want +to see you later--I--Are you in the hotel?" + +"Oh yes. I'll see you at the one-o'clock table d'hote, I suppose." + +March went away with his head whirling in the question whether he should +tell his wife at once of Kenby's presence, or leave her free for the +pleasures of Wurzburg, till he could shape the fact into some safe and +acceptable form. She met him at the door with her guide-books, wraps and +umbrellas, and would hardly give him time to get on his hat and coat. + +"Now, I want you to avoid the Stollers as far as you can see them. This +is to be a real wedding-journey day, with no extraneous acquaintance to +bother; the more strangers the better. Wurzburg is richer than anything +I imagined. I've looked it all up; I've got the plan of the city, so +that we can easily find the way. We'll walk first, and take carriages +whenever we get tired. We'll go to the cathedral at once; I want a good +gulp of rococo to begin with; there wasn't half enough of it at Ansbach. +Isn't it strange how we've come round to it?" + +She referred to that passion for the Gothic which they had obediently +imbibed from Ruskin in the days of their early Italian travel and +courtship, when all the English-speaking world bowed down to him in +devout aversion from the renaissance, and pious abhorrence of the rococo. + +"What biddable little things we were!" she went on, while March was +struggling to keep Kenby in the background of his consciousness. +"The rococo must have always had a sneaking charm for us, when we were +pinning our faith to pointed arches; and yet I suppose we were perfectly +sincere. Oh, look at that divinely ridiculous Madonna!" They were now +making their way out of the crooked footway behind their hotel toward the +street leading to the cathedral, and she pointed to the Blessed Virgin +over the door of some religious house, her drapery billowing about her +feet; her body twisting to show the sculptor's mastery of anatomy, and +the halo held on her tossing head with the help of stout gilt rays. In +fact, the Virgin's whole figure was gilded, and so was that of the child +in her arms. "Isn't she delightful?" + +"I see what you mean," said March, with a dubious glance at the statue, +"but I'm not sure, now, that I wouldn't like something quieter in my +Madonnas." + +The thoroughfare which they emerged upon, with the cathedral ending the +prospective, was full of the holiday so near at hand. The narrow +sidewalks were thronged with people, both soldiers and civilians, and up +the middle of the street detachments of military came and went, halting +the little horse-cars and the huge beer-wagons which otherwise seemed to +have the sole right to the streets of Wurzburg; they came jingling or +thundering out of the aide streets and hurled themselves round the +corners reckless of the passers, who escaped alive by flattening +themselves like posters against the house walls. There were peasants, +men and women, in the costume which the unbroken course of their country +life had kept as quaint as it was a hundred years before; there were +citizens in the misfits of the latest German fashions; there were +soldiers of all arms in their vivid uniforms, and from time to time there +were pretty young girls in white dresses with low necks, and bare arms +gloved to the elbows, who were following a holiday custom of the place in +going about the streets in ball costume. The shop windows were filled +with portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, and the Prince-Regent and +the ladies of his family; the German and Bavarian colors draped the +facades of the houses and festooned the fantastic Madonnas posing above +so many portals. The modern patriotism included the ancient piety +without disturbing it; the rococo city remained ecclesiastical through +its new imperialism, and kept the stamp given it by the long rule of the +prince-bishops under the sovereignty of its King and the suzerainty of +its Kaiser. + +The Marches escaped from the present, when they entered the cathedral, as +wholly as if they had taken hold of the horns of the altar, though they +were far from literally doing this in an interior so grandiose. There +area few rococo churches in Italy, and perhaps more in Spain, which +approach the perfection achieved by the Wurzburg cathedral in the baroque +style. For once one sees what that style can do in architecture and +sculpture, and whatever one may say of the details, one cannot deny that +there is a prodigiously effective keeping in it all. This interior came +together, as the decorators say, with a harmony that the travellers had +felt nowhere in their earlier experience of the rococo. It was, +unimpeachably perfect in its way, "Just," March murmured to his wife, +"as the social and political and scientific scheme of the eighteenth +century was perfected in certain times and places. But the odd thing is +to find the apotheosis of the rococo away up here in Germany. I wonder +how much the prince-bishops really liked it. But they had become rococo, +too! Look at that row of their statues on both sides of the nave! What +magnificent swell! How they abash this poor plain Christ, here; he would +like to get behind the pillar; he knows that he could never lend himself +to the baroque style. It expresses the eighteenth century, though. But +how you long for some little hint of the thirteenth, or even the +nineteenth." + +"I don't," she whispered back. "I'm perfectly wild with Wurzburg. +I like to have a thing go as far as it can. At Nuremberg I wanted all +the Gothic I could get, and in Wurzburg I want all the baroque I can get. +I am consistent." + +She kept on praising herself to his disadvantage, as women do, all the +way to the Neumunster Church, where they were going to revere the tomb of +Walther yon der Vogelweide, not so much for his own sake as for +Longfellow's. The older poet lies buried within, but his monument is +outside the church, perhaps for the greater convenience of the sparrows, +which now represent the birds he loved. The cenotaph is surmounted by a +broad vase, and around this are thickly perched the effigies of the +Meistersinger's feathered friends, from whom the canons of the church, as +Mrs. March read aloud from her Baedeker, long ago directed his bequest to +themselves. In revenge for their lawless greed the defrauded +beneficiaries choose to burlesque the affair by looking like the four- +and-twenty blackbirds when the pie was opened. + +She consented to go for a moment to the Gothic Marienkapelle with her +husband in the revival of his mediaeval taste, and she was rewarded +amidst its thirteenth-century sincerity by his recantation. "You are +right! Baroque is the thing for Wurzburg; one can't enjoy Gothic here +any more than one could enjoy baroque in Nuremberg." + +Reconciled in the rococo, they now called a carriage, and went to visit +the palace of the prince-bishops who had so well known how to make the +heavenly take the image and superscription of the worldly; and they were +jointly indignant to find it shut against the public in preparation for +the imperialities and royalties coining to occupy it. They were in time +for the noon guard-mounting, however, and Mrs. March said that the way +the retiring squad kicked their legs out in the high martial step of the +German soldiers was a perfect expression of the insolent militarism of +their empire, and was of itself enough to make one thank Heaven that one +was an American and a republican. She softened a little toward their +system when it proved that the garden of the palace was still open, and +yet more when she sank down upon a bench between two marble groups +representing the Rape of Proserpine and the Rape of Europa. They stood +each in a gravelled plot, thickly overrun by a growth of ivy, and the +vine climbed the white naked limbs of the nymphs, who were present on a +pretence of gathering flowers, but really to pose at the spectators, and +clad them to the waist and shoulders with an effect of modesty never +meant by the sculptor, but not displeasing. There was an old fountain +near, its stone rim and centre of rock-work green with immemorial mould, +and its basin quivering between its water-plants under the soft fall of +spray. At a waft of fitful breeze some leaves of early autumn fell from +the trees overhead upon the elderly pair where they sat, and a little +company of sparrows came and hopped about their feet. Though the square +without was so all astir with festive expectation, there were few people +in the garden; three or four peasant women in densely fluted white skirts +and red aprons and shawls wandered by and stared at the Europa and at the +Proserpine. + +It was a precious moment in which the charm of the city's past seemed to +culminate, and they were loath to break it by speech. + +"Why didn't we have something like all this on our first wedding +journey?" she sighed at last. "To think of our battening from Boston to +Niagara and back! And how hard we tried to make something of Rochester +and Buffalo, of Montreal and Quebec!" + +"Niagara wasn't so bad," he said, "and I will never go back on Quebec." + +"Ah, but if we could have had Hamburg and Leipsic, and Carlsbad and +Nuremberg, and Ansbach and Wurzburg! Perhaps this is meant as a +compensation for our lost youth. But I can't enjoy it as I could when I +was young. It's wasted on my sere and yellow leaf. I wish Burnamy and +Miss Triscoe were here; I should like to try this garden on them." + +"They wouldn't care for it," he replied, and upon a daring impulse he +added, "Kenby and Mrs. Adding might." If she took this suggestion in +good part, he could tell her that Kenby was in Wurzburg. + +"Don't speak of them! They're in just that besotted early middle-age +when life has settled into a self-satisfied present, with no past and no +future; the most philistine, the most bourgeois, moment of existence. +Better be elderly at once, as far as appreciation of all this goes." +She rose and put her hand on his arm, and pushed him away in the +impulsive fashion of her youth, across alleys of old trees toward a +balustraded terrace in the background which had tempted her. + +"It isn't so bad, being elderly," he said. "By that time we have +accumulated enough past to sit down and really enjoy its associations. +We have got all sorts of perspectives and points of view. We know +where we are at." + +"I don't mind being elderly. The world's just as amusing as ever, and +lots of disagreeable things have dropped out. It's the getting more than +elderly; it's the getting old; and then--" + +They shrank a little closer together, and walked on in silence till he +said, "Perhaps there's something else, something better--somewhere." + +They had reached the balustraded terrace, and were pausing for pleasure +in the garden tops below, with the flowery spaces, and the statued +fountains all coming together. She put her hand on one of the fat little +urchin-groups on the stone coping. "I don't want cherubs, when I can +have these putti. And those old prince-bishops didn't, either!" + +"I don't suppose they kept a New England conscience," he said, with a +vague smile. "It would be difficult in the presence of the rococo." + +They left the garden through the beautiful gate which the old court +ironsmith Oegg hammered out in lovely forms of leaves and flowers, and +shaped laterally upward, as lightly as if with a waft of his hand, in +gracious Louis Quinze curves; and they looked back at it in the kind of +despair which any perfection inspires. They said how feminine it was, +how exotic, how expressive of a luxurious ideal of life which art had +purified and left eternally charming. They remembered their Ruskinian +youth, and the confidence with which they would once have condemned it; +and they had a sense of recreance in now admiring it; but they certainly +admired it, and it remained for them the supreme expression of that time- +soul, mundane, courtly, aristocratic, flattering, which once influenced +the art of the whole world, and which had here so curiously found its +apotheosis in a city remote from its native place and under a rule +sacerdotally vowed to austerity. The vast superb palace of the prince +bishops, which was now to house a whole troop of sovereigns, imperial, +royal, grand ducal and ducal, swelled aloft in superb amplitude; but it +did not realize their historic pride so effectively as this exquisite +work of the court ironsmith. It related itself in its aerial beauty to +that of the Tiepolo frescoes which the travellers knew were swimming and +soaring on the ceilings within, and from which it seemed to accent their +exclusion with a delicate irony, March said. "Or iron-mongery," he +corrected himself upon reflection. + + + + +LIV. + +He had forgotten Kenby in these aesthetic interests, but he remembered +him again when he called a carriage, and ordered it driven to their +hotel. It was the hour of the German mid-day table d'hote, and they +would be sure to meet him there. The question now was how March should +own his presence in time to prevent his wife from showing her ignorance +of it to Kenby himself, and he was still turning the question hopelessly +over in his mind when the sight of the hotel seemed to remind her of a +fact which she announced. + +"Now, my dear, I am tired to death, and I am not going to sit through a +long table d'hote. I want you to send me up a simple beefsteak and a cup +of tea to our rooms; and I don't want you to come near for hours; because +I intend to take a whole afternoon nap. You can keep all the maps and +plans, and guides, and you had better go and see what the Volksfest is +like; it will give you some notion of the part the people are really +taking in all this official celebration, and you know I don't care. +Don't come up after dinner to see how I am getting along; I shall get +along; and if you should happen to wake me after I had dropped off--" + +Kenby had seen them arrive from where he sat at the reading-room window, +waiting for the dinner hour, and had meant to rush out and greet Mrs. +March as they passed up the corridor. But she looked so tired that he +had decided to spare her till she came down to dinner; and as he sat with +March at their soup, he asked if she were not well. + +March explained, and he provisionally invented some regrets from her that +she should not see Kenby till supper. + +Kenby ordered a bottle of one of the famous Wurzburg wines for their +mutual consolation in her absence, and in the friendliness which its +promoted they agreed to spend the afternoon together. No man is so +inveterate a husband as not to take kindly an occasional release to +bachelor companionship, and before the dinner was over they agreed that +they would go to the Volksfest, and get some notion of the popular life +and amusements of Wurzburg, which was one of the few places where Kenby +had never been before; and they agreed that they would walk. + +Their way was partly up the quay of the Main, past a barrack full of +soldiers. They met detachments of soldiers everywhere, infantry, +artillery, cavalry. + +"This is going to be a great show," Kenby said, meaning the manoeuvres, +and he added, as if now he had kept away from the subject long enough and +had a right to recur to it, at least indirectly, "I should like to have +Rose see it, and get his impressions." + +"I've an idea he wouldn't approve of it. His mother says his mind is +turning more and more to philanthropy." + +Kenby could not forego such a chance to speak of Mrs. Adding. "It's one +of the prettiest things to see how she understands Rose. It's charming +to see them together. She wouldn't have half the attraction without +him." + +"Oh, yes," March assented. He had often wondered how a man wishing to +marry a widow managed with the idea of her children by another marriage; +but if Kenby was honest; it was much simpler than he had supposed. He +could not say this to him, however, and in a certain embarrassment he had +with the conjecture in his presence he attempted a diversion. "We're +promised something at the Volksfest which will be a great novelty to us +as Americans. Our driver told us this morning that one of the houses +there was built entirely of wood." + +When they reached the grounds of the Volksfest, this civil feature of the +great military event at hand, which the Marches had found largely set +forth in the programme of the parade, did not fully keep the glowing +promises made for it; in fact it could not easily have done so. It was +in a pleasant neighborhood of new villas such as form the modern quarter +of every German city, and the Volksfest was even more unfinished than its +environment. It was not yet enclosed by the fence which was to hide its +wonders from the non-paying public, but March and Kenby went in through +an archway where the gate-money was as effectually collected from them as +if they were barred every other entrance. + +The wooden building was easily distinguishable from the other edifices +because these were tents and booths still less substantial. They did not +make out its function, but of the others four sheltered merry-go-rounds, +four were beer-gardens, four were restaurants, and the rest were devoted +to amusements of the usual country-fair type. Apparently they had little +attraction for country people. The Americans met few peasants in the +grounds, and neither at the Edison kinematograph, where they refreshed +their patriotism with some scenes of their native life, nor at the little +theatre where they saw the sports of the arena revived, in the wrestle of +a woman with a bear, did any of the people except tradesmen and artisans +seem to be taking part in the festival expression of the popular +pleasure. + +The woman, who finally threw the bear, whether by slight, or by main +strength, or by a previous understanding with him, was a slender +creature, pathetically small and not altogether plain; and March as they +walked away lapsed into a pensive muse upon her strange employ. He +wondered how she came to take it up, and whether she began with the bear +when they were both very young, and she could easily throw him. + +"Well, women have a great deal more strength than we suppose," Kenby +began with a philosophical air that gave March the hope of some rational +conversation. Then his eye glazed with a far-off look, and a doting +smile came into his face. "When we went through the Dresden gallery +together, Rose and I were perfectly used up at the end of an hour, but +his mother kept on as long as there was anything to see, and came away as +fresh as a peach." + +Then March saw that it was useless to expect anything different from him, +and he let him talk on about Mrs. Adding all the rest of the way back to +the hotel. Kenby seemed only to have begun when they reached the door, +and wanted to continue the subject in the reading-room. + +March pleaded his wish to find how his wife had got through the +afternoon, and he escaped to her. He would have told her now that Kenby +was in the house, but he was really so sick of the fact himself that he +could not speak of it at once, and he let her go on celebrating all she +had seen from the window since she had waked from her long nap. She said +she could never be glad enough that they had come just at that time. +Soldiers had been going by the whole afternoon, and that made it so +feudal. + +Yes," he assented. "But aren't you coming up to the station with me to +see the Prince-Regent arrive? He's due at seven, you know." + +"I declare I had forgotten all about it. No, I'm not equal to it. You +must go; you can tell me everything; be sure to notice how the Princess +Maria looks; the last of the Stuarts, you know; and some people consider +her the rightful Queen of England; and I'll have the supper ordered, and +we can go down as soon as you've got back." + + + + +LV. + +March felt rather shabby stealing away without Kenby; but he had really +had as much of Mrs. Adding as he could stand, for one day, and he was +even beginning to get sick of Rose. Besides, he had not sent back a line +for 'Every Other Week' yet, and he had made up his mind to write a sketch +of the manoeuvres. To this end he wished to receive an impression of the +Prince-Regent's arrival which should not be blurred or clouded by other +interests. His wife knew the kind of thing he liked to see, and would +have helped him out with his observations, but Kenby would have got in +the way, and would have clogged the movement of his fancy in assigning +the facts to the parts he would like them to play in the sketch. + +At least he made some such excuses to himself as he hurried along toward +the Kaiserstrasse. The draught of universal interest in that direction +had left the other streets almost deserted, but as he approached the +thoroughfare he found all the ways blocked, and the horse-cars, +ordinarily so furiously headlong, arrested by the multiple ranks of +spectators on the sidewalks. The avenue leading from the railway station +to the palace was decorated with flags and garlands, and planted with the +stems of young firs and birches. The doorways were crowded, and the +windows dense with eager faces peering out of the draped bunting. The +carriageway was kept clear by mild policemen who now and then allowed one +of the crowd to cross it. + +The crowd was made up mostly of women and boys, and when March joined +them, they had already been waiting an hour for the sight of the princes +who were to bless them with a vision of the faery race which kings always +are to common men. He thought the people looked dull, and therefore able +to bear the strain of expectation with patience better than a livelier +race. They relieved it by no attempt at joking; here and there a dim +smile dawned on a weary face, but it seemed an effect of amiability +rather than humor. There was so little of this, or else it was so well +bridled by the solemnity of the occasion, that not a man, woman, or child +laughed when a bareheaded maid-servant broke through the lines and ran +down between them with a life-size plaster bust of the Emperor William in +her arms: she carried it like an overgrown infant, and in alarm at her +conspicuous part she cast frightened looks from side to side without +arousing any sort of notice. Undeterred by her failure, a young dog, +parted from his owner, and seeking him in the crowd, pursued his search +in a wild flight down the guarded roadway with an air of anxiety that in +America would have won him thunders of applause, and all sorts of kindly +encouragements to greater speed. But this German crowd witnessed his +progress apparently without interest, and without a sign of pleasure. +They were there to see the Prince-Regent arrive, and they did not suffer +themselves to be distracted by any preliminary excitement. Suddenly the +indefinable emotion which expresses the fulfilment of expectation in a +waiting crowd passed through the multitude, and before he realized it +March was looking into the friendly gray-bearded face of the Prince- +Regent, for the moment that his carriage allowed in passing. This came +first preceded by four outriders, and followed by other simple equipages +of Bavarian blue, full of highnesses of all grades. Beside the Regent +sat his daughter-in-law, the Princess Maria, her silvered hair framing a +face as plain and good as the Regent's, if not so intelligent. + +He, in virtue of having been born in Wurzburg, is officially supposed to +be specially beloved by his fellow townsmen; and they now testified their +affection as he whirled through their ranks, bowing right and left, by +what passes in Germany for a cheer. It is the word Hoch, groaned forth +from abdominal depths, and dismally prolonged in a hollow roar like that +which the mob makes behind the scenes at the theatre before bursting in +visible tumult on the stage. Then the crowd dispersed, and March came +away wondering why such a kindly-looking Prince-Regent should not have +given them a little longer sight of himself; after they had waited so +patiently for hours to see him. But doubtless in those countries, he +concluded, the art of keeping the sovereign precious by suffering him to +be rarely and briefly seen is wisely studied. + +On his way home he resolved to confess Kenby's presence; and he did so as +soon as he sat down to supper with his wife. "I ought to have told you +the first thing after breakfast. But when I found you in that mood of +having the place all to ourselves, I put it off." + +"You took terrible chances, my dear," she said, gravely. + +"And I have been terribly punished. You've no idea how much Kenby has +talked to me about Mrs. Adding!" + +She broke out laughing. "Well, perhaps you've suffered enough. But you +can see now, can't you, that it would have been awful if I had met him, +and let out that I didn't know he was here?" + +"Terrible. But if I had told, it would have spoiled the whole morning +for you; you couldn't have thought of anything else." + +"Oh, I don't know," she said, airily. "What should you think if I told +you I had known he was here ever since last night?" She went on in +delight at the start he gave. "I saw him come into the hotel while you +were gone for the guide-books, and I determined to keep it from you as +long as I could; I knew it would worry you. We've both been very nice; +and I forgive you," she hurried on, "because I've really got something to +tell you." + +"Don't tell me that Burnamy is here!" + +"Don't jump to conclusions! No, Burnamy isn't here, poor fellow! And +don't suppose that I'm guilty of concealment because I haven't told you +before. I was just thinking whether I wouldn't spare you till morning, +but now I shall let you take the brunt of it. Mrs. Adding and Rose are +here." She gave the fact time to sink in, and then she added, "And Miss +Triscoe and her father are here." + +"What is the matter with Major Eltwin and his wife being here, too? Are +they in our hotel?" + +"No, they are not. They came to look for rooms while you were off +waiting for the Prince-Regent, and I saw them. They intended to go to +Frankfort for the manoeuvres, but they heard that there was not even +standing-room there, and so the general telegraphed to the Spanischer +Hof, and they all came here. As it is, he will have to room with Rose, +and Agatha and Mrs. Adding will room together. I didn't think Agatha was +looking very well; she looked unhappy; I don't believe she's heard, from +Burnamy yet; I hadn't a chance to ask her. And there's something else +that I'm afraid will fairly make you sick." + +"Oh, no; go on. I don't think anything can do that, after an afternoon +of Kenby's confidences." + +"It's worse than Kenby," she said with a sigh. "You know I told you at +Carlsbad I thought that ridiculous old thing was making up to Mrs. +Adding." + +"Kenby? Why of co--" + +"Don't be stupid, my dear! No, not Kenby: General Triscoe. I wish you +could have been here to see him paying her all sort; of silly attentions, +and hear him making her compliments." + +"Thank you. I think I'm just as well without it. Did she pay him silly +attentions and compliments, too?" + +"That's the only thing that can make me forgive her for his wanting her. +She was keeping him at arm's-length the whole time, and she was doing it +so as not to make him contemptible before his daughter." + +"It must have been hard. And Rose?" + +"Rose didn't seem very well. He looks thin and pale; but he's sweeter +than ever. She's certainly commoner clay than Rose. No, I won't say +that! It's really nothing but General Triscoe's being an old goose about +her that makes her seem so, and it isn't fair." + +March went down to his coffee in the morning with the delicate duty of +telling Kenby that Mrs. Adding was in town. Kenby seemed to think it +quite natural she should wish to see the manoeuvres, and not at all +strange that she should come to them with General Triscoe and his +daughter. He asked if March would not go with him to call upon her after +breakfast, and as this was in the line of his own instructions from Mrs. +March, he went. + +They found Mrs. Adding with the Triscoes, and March saw nothing that was +not merely friendly, or at the most fatherly, in the general's behavior +toward her. If Mrs. Adding or Miss Triscoe saw more, they hid it in a +guise of sisterly affection for each other. At the most the general +showed a gayety which one would not have expected of him under any +conditions, and which the fact that he and Rose had kept each other awake +a good deal the night before seemed so little adapted to call out. He +joked with Rose about their room and their beds, and put on a comradery +with him that was not a perfect fit, and that suffered by contrast with +the pleasure of the boy and Kenby in meeting. There was a certain +question in the attitude of Mrs. Adding till March helped Kenby to +account for his presence; then she relaxed in an effect of security so +tacit that words overstate it, and began to make fun of Rose. + +March could not find that Miss Triscoe looked unhappy, as his wife had +said; he thought simply that she had grown plainer; but when he reported +this, she lost her patience with him. In a girl, she said, plainness was +unhappiness; and she wished to know when he would ever learn to look an +inch below the surface: She was sure that Agatha Triscoe had not heard +from Burnamy since the Emperor's birthday; that she was at swords'-points +with her father, and so desperate that she did not care what became of +her. + +He had left Kenby with the others, and now, after his wife had talked +herself tired of them all, he proposed going out again to look about the +city, where there was nothing for the moment to remind them of the +presence of their friends or even of their existence. She answered that +she was worrying about all those people, and trying to work out their +problem for them. He asked why she did not let them work it out +themselves as they would have to do, after all her worry, and she said +that where her sympathy had been excited she could not stop worrying, +whether it did any good or not, and she could not respect any one who +could drop things so completely out of his mind as he could; she had +never been able to respect that in him. + +"I know, my dear," he assented. "But I don't think it's a question of +moral responsibility; it's a question of mental structure, isn't it? +Your consciousness isn't built in thought-tight compartments, and one +emotion goes all through it, and sinks you; but I simply close the doors +and shut the emotion in, and keep on." + +The fancy pleased him so much that he worked it out in all its +implications, and could not, after their long experience of each other, +realize that she was not enjoying the joke too, till she said she saw +that he merely wished to tease. Then, too late, he tried to share her +worry; but she protested that she was not worrying at all; that she cared +nothing about those people: that she was nervous, she was tired; and she +wished he would leave her, and go out alone. + +He found himself in the street again, and he perceived that he must be +walking fast when a voice called him by name, and asked him what his +hurry was. The voice was Stoller's, who got into step with him and +followed the first with a second question. + +"Made up your mind to go to the manoeuvres with me?" + +His bluntness made it easy for March to answer: "I'm afraid my wife +couldn't stand the drive back and forth." + +"Come without her." + +"Thank you. It's very kind of yon. I'm not certain that I shall go at +all. If I do, I shall run out by train, and take my chances with the +crowd." + +Stoller insisted no further. He felt no offence at the refusal of his +offer, or chose to show none. He said, with the same uncouth abruptness +as before: "Heard anything of that fellow since he left Carlsbad?" + +"Burnamy?" + +"Mm." + +"No." + +"Know where he is?" + +"I don't in the least." + +Stoller let another silence elapse while they hurried on, before he said, +"I got to thinking what he done afterwards. He wasn't bound to look out +for me; he might suppose I knew what I was about." + +March turned his face and stared in Stoller's, which he was letting hang +forward as he stamped heavily on. Had the disaster proved less than he +had feared, and did he still want Burnamy's help in patching up the +broken pieces; or did he really wish to do Burnamy justice to his friend? + +In any case March's duty was clear. "I think Burnamy was bound to look +out for you; Mr. Stoller, and I am glad to know that he saw it in the +same light." + +"I know he did," said Stoker with a blaze as from a long-smouldering +fury, "and damn him, I'm not going to have it. I'm not going to, plead +the baby act with him, or with any man. You tell him so, when you get +the chance. You tell him I don't hold him accountable for anything I +made him do. That ain't business; I don't want him around me, any more; +but if he wants to go back to the paper he can have his place. You tell +him I stand by what I done; and it's all right between him and me. +I hain't done anything about it, the way I wanted him to help me to; I've +let it lay, and I'm a-going to. I guess it ain't going to do me any +harm, after all; our people hain't got very long memories; but if it is, +let it. You tell him it's all right." + +"I don't know where he is, Mr. Stoller, and I don't know that I care to +be the bearer of your message," said March. + +"Why not?" + +"Why, for one thing, I don't agree with you that it's all right. Your +choosing to stand by the consequences of Burnamy's wrong doesn't undo it. +As I understand, you don't pardon it--" + +Stoller gulped and did not answer at once. Then he said, "I stand by +what I done. I'm not going to let him say I turned him down for doing +what I told him to, because I hadn't the sense to know what I was about." + +"Ah, I don't think it's a thing he'll like to speak of in any case," said +March. + +Stoller left him, at the corner they had reached, as abruptly as he had +joined him, and March hurried back to his wife, and told her what had +just passed between him and Stoller. + +She broke out, "Well, I am surprised at you, my dear! You have always +accused me of suspecting people, and attributing bad motives; and here +you've refused even to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt. He +merely wanted to save his savage pride with you, and that's all he wants +to do with Burnamy. How could it hurt the poor boy to know that Stoller +doesn't blame him? Why should you refuse to give his message to Burnamy? +I don't want you to ridicule me for my conscience any more, Basil; you're +twice as bad as I ever was. Don't you think that a person can ever +expiate an offence? I've often heard you say that if any one owned his +fault, he put it from him, and it was the same as if it hadn't been; and +hasn't Burnamy owned up over and over again? I'm astonished at you, +dearest." + +March was in fact somewhat astonished at himself in the light of her +reasoning; but she went on with some sophistries that restored him to his +self-righteousness. + +"I suppose you think he has interfered with Stoller's political ambition, +and injured him in that way. Well, what if he has? Would it be a good +thing to have a man like that succeed in politics? You're always saying +that the low character of our politicians is the ruin of the country; and +I'm sure," she added, with a prodigious leap over all the sequences, +"that Mr. Stoller is acting nobly; and it's your duty to help him relieve +Burnamy's mind." At the laugh he broke into she hastened to say, "Or if +you won't, I hope you'll not object to my doing so, for I shall, anyway!" + +She rose as if she were going to begin at once, in spite of his laughing; +and in fact she had already a plan for coming to Stoller's assistance by +getting at Burnamy through Miss Triscoe, whom she suspected of knowing +where he was. There had been no chance for them to speak of him either +that morning or the evening before, and after a great deal of controversy +with herself in her husband's presence she decided to wait till they came +naturally together the next morning for the walk to the Capuchin Church +on the hill beyond the river, which they had agreed to take. She could +not keep from writing a note to Miss Triscoe begging her to be sure to +come, and hinting that she had something very important to speak of. + +She was not sure but she had been rather silly to do this, but when they +met the girl confessed that she had thought of giving up the walk, and +might not have come except for Mrs. March's note. She had come with +Rose, and had left him below with March; Mrs. Adding was coming later +with Kenby and General Triscoe. + +Mrs. March lost no time in telling her the great news; and if she had +been in doubt before of the girl's feeling for Burnamy she was now in +none. She had the pleasure of seeing her flush with hope, and then the +pain which was also a pleasure, of seeing her blanch with dismay. + +"I don't know where he is, Mrs. March. I haven't heard a word from him +since that night in Carlsbad. I expected--I didn't know but you--" + +Mrs. March shook her head. She treated the fact skillfully as something +to be regretted simply because it would be such a relief to Burnamy to +know how Mr. Stoller now felt. Of course they could reach him somehow; +you could always get letters to people in Europe, in the end; and, in +fact, it was altogether probable that he was that very instant in +Wurzburg; for if the New York-Paris Chronicle had wanted him to write up +the Wagner operas, it would certainly want him to write up the +manoeuvres. She established his presence in Wurzburg by such an +irrefragable chain of reasoning that, at a knock outside, she was just +able to kelp back a scream, while she ran to open the door. It was not +Burnamy, as in compliance with every nerve it ought to have been, but her +husband, who tried to justify his presence by saying that they were all +waiting for her and Miss Triscoe, and asked when they were coming. + +She frowned him silent, and then shut herself outside with him long +enough to whisper, "Say she's got a headache, or anything you please; +but don't stop talking here with me, or I shall go wild." She then shut +herself in again, with the effect of holding him accountable for the +whole affair. + + + + +LVI. + +General Triscoe could not keep his irritation, at hearing that his +daughter was not coming, out of the excuses he made to Mrs. Adding; +he said again and again that it must seem like a discourtesy to her. +She gayly disclaimed any such notion; she would not hear of putting off +their excursion to another day; it had been raining just long enough to +give them a reasonable hope of a few hours' drought, and they might not +have another dry spell for weeks. She slipped off her jacket after they +started, and gave it to Kenby, but she let General Triscoe hold her +umbrella over her, while he limped beside her. She seemed to March, as +he followed with Rose, to be playing the two men off against each other, +with an ease which he wished his wife could be there to see, and to judge +aright. + +They crossed by the Old Bridge, which is of the earliest years of the +seventh century, between rows of saints whose statues surmount the piers. +Some are bishops as well as saints; one must have been at Rome in his +day, for he wore his long thick beard in the fashion of Michelangelo's +Moses. He stretched out toward the passers two fingers of blessing and +was unaware of the sparrow which had lighted on them and was giving him +the effect of offering it to the public admiration. Squads of soldiers +tramping by turned to look and smile, and the dull faces of citizens +lighted up at the quaint sight. Some children stopped and remained very +quiet, not to scare away the bird; and a cold-faced, spiritual-looking +priest paused among them as if doubting whether to rescue the absent- +minded bishop from a situation derogatory to his dignity; but he passed +on, and then the sparrow suddenly flew off. + +Rose Adding had lingered for the incident with March, but they now pushed +on, and came up with the others at the end of the bridge, where they +found them in question whether they had not better take a carriage and +drive to the foot of the hill before they began their climb. March +thanked them, but said he was keeping up the terms of his cure, and was +getting in all the walking he could. Rose begged his mother not to +include him in the driving party; he protested that he was feeling so +well, and the walk was doing him good. His mother consented, if he would +promise not to get tired, and then she mounted into the two-spanner which +had driven instinctively up to their party when their parley began, and +General Triscoe took the place beside her, while Kenby, with smiling +patience, seated himself in front. + +Rose kept on talking with March about Wurzburg and its history, which it +seemed he had been reading the night before when he could not sleep. He +explained, "We get little histories of the places wherever we go. That's +what Mr. Kenby does, you know." + +"Oh, yes," said March. + +"I don't suppose I shall get a chance to read much here," Rose continued, +"with General Triscoe in the room. He doesn't like the light." + +"Well, well. He's rather old, you know. And you musn't read too much, +Rose. It isn't good for you." + +"I know, but if I don't read, I think, and that keeps me awake worse. Of +course, I respect General Triscoe for being in the war, and getting +wounded," the boy suggested. + +"A good many did it," March was tempted to say. + +The boy did not notice his insinuation. "I suppose there were some +things they did in the army, and then they couldn't get over the habit. +But General Grant says in his 'Life' that he never used a profane +expletive." + +"Does General Triscoe ?" + +Rose answered reluctantly, "If anything wakes him in the night, or if he +can't make these German beds over to suit him--" + +"I see." March turned his face to hide the smile which he would not have +let the boy detect. He thought best not to let Rose resume his +impressions of the general; and in talk of weightier matters they found +themselves at that point of the climb where the carriage was waiting for +them. From this point they followed an alley through ivied, garden +walls, till they reached the first of the balustraded terraces which +ascend to the crest of the hill where the church stands. Each terrace is +planted with sycamores, and the face of the terrace wall supports a bass- +relief commemorating with the drama of its lifesize figures the stations +of the cross. + +Monks and priests were coming and going, and dropped on the steps leading +from terrace to terrace were women and children on their knees in prayer. +It was all richly reminiscent of pilgrim scenes in other Catholic lands; +but here there was a touch of earnest in the Northern face of the +worshipers which the South had never imparted. Even in the beautiful +rococo interior of the church at the top of the hill there was a sense of +something deeper and truer than mere ecclesiasticism; and March came out +of it in a serious muse while the boy at his side did nothing to +interrupt. A vague regret filled his heart as he gazed silently out over +the prospect of river and city and vineyard, purpling together below the +top where he stood, and mixed with this regret was a vague resentment of +his wife's absence. She ought to have been there to share his pang and +his pleasure; they had so long enjoyed everything together that without +her he felt unable to get out of either emotion all there was in it. + +The forgotten boy stole silently down the terraces after the rest of the +party who had left him behind with March. At the last terrace they +stopped and waited; and after a delay that began to be long to Mrs. +Adding, she wondered aloud what could have become of them. + +Kenby promptly offered to go back and see, and she consented in seeming +to refuse: "It isn't worth while. Rose has probably got Mr. March into +some deep discussion, and they've forgotten all about us. But if you +will go, Mr. Kenby, you might just remind Rose of my existence." She let +him lay her jacket on her shoulders before he left her, and then she sat +down on one of the steps, which General Triscoe kept striking with the +point of her umbrella as he stood before her. + +"I really shall have to take it from you if you do that any more," she +said, laughing up in his face. "I'm serious." + +He stopped. "I wish I could believe you were serious, for a moment." + +"You may, if you think it will do you any good. But I don't see why." + +The general smiled, but with a kind of tremulous eagerness which might +have been pathetic to any one who liked him. "Do you know this is almost +the first time I have spoken alone with you?" + +"Really, I hadn't noticed," said Mrs. Adding. + +General Triscoe laughed in rather a ghastly way. "Well, that's +encouraging, at least, to a man who's had his doubts whether it wasn't +intended." + +"Intended? By whom? What do you mean, General Triscoe? Why in the +world shouldn't you have spoken alone with me before?" + +He was not, with all his eagerness, ready to say, and while she smiled +pleasantly she had the look in her eyes of being brought to bay and being +prepared, if it must come to that, to have the worst over, then and +there. She was not half his age, but he was aware of her having no +respect for his years; compared with her average American past as he +understood it, his social place was much higher, but, she was not in the +least awed by it; in spite of his war record she was making him behave +like a coward. He was in a false position, and if he had any one but +himself to blame he had not her. He read her equal knowledge of these +facts in the clear eyes that made him flush and turn his own away. + +Then he started with a quick "Hello!" and stood staring up at the steps +from the terrace above, where Rose Adding was staying himself weakly by a +clutch of Kenby on one side and March on the other. + +His mother looked round and caught herself up from where she sat and ran +toward him. "Oh, Rose!" + +"It's nothing, mother," he called to her, and as she dropped on her knees +before him he sank limply against her. "It was like what I had in +Carlsbad; that's all. Don't worry about me, please!" + +"I'm not worrying, Rose," she said with courage of the same texture as +his own. "You've been walking too much. You must go back in the +carriage with us. Can't you have it come here?" she asked Kenby. + +"There's no road, Mrs. Adding. But if Rose would let me carry him--" + +"I can walk," the boy protested, trying to lift himself from her neck. + +"No, no! you mustn't." She drew away and let him fall into the arms that +Kenby put round him. He raised the frail burden lightly to his shoulder, +and moved strongly away, followed by the eyes of the spectators who had +gathered about the little group, but who dispersed now, and went back to +their devotions. + +March hurried after Kenby with Mrs. Adding, whom he told he had just +missed Rose and was looking about for him, when Kenby came with her +message for them. They made sure that he was nowhere about the church, +and then started together down the terraces. At the second or third +station below they found the boy clinging to the barrier that protected +the bass-relief from the zeal of the devotees. He looked white and sick, +though he insisted that he was well, and when he turned to come away with +them he reeled and would have fallen if Kenby had not caught him. Kenby +wanted to carry him, but Rose would not let him, and had made his way +down between them. + +"Yea, he has such a spirit," she said, "and I've no doubt he's suffering +now more from Mr. Kenby's kindness than from his own sickness he had one +of these giddy turns in Carlsbad, though, and I shall certainly have a +doctor to see him." + +"I think I should, Mrs. Adding," said March, not too gravely, for it +seemed to him that it was not quite his business to alarm her further, +if she was herself taking the affair with that seriousness. +He questioned whether she was taking it quite seriously enough, +when she turned with a laugh, and called to General Triscoe, who was +limping down the steps of the last terrace behind them: + +"Oh, poor General Triscoe! I thought you had gone on ahead." + +General Triscoe could not enter into the joke of being forgotten, +apparently. He assisted with gravity at the disposition of the party for +the return, when they all reached the carriage. Rose had the place +beside his mother, and Kenby wished March to take his with the general +and let him sit with the driver; but he insisted that he would rather +walk home, and he did walk till they had driven out of eight. Then he +called a passing one-spanner, and drove to his hotel in comfort and +silence. + + + + +LVII. + +Kenby did not come to the Swan before supper; then he reported that the +doctor had said Rose was on the verge of a nervous collapse. He had +overworked at school, but the immediate trouble was the high, thin air, +which the doctor said he must be got out of at once, into a quiet place +at the sea-shore somewhere. He had suggested Ostend; or some point on +the French coast; Kenby had thought of Schevleningen, and the doctor had +said that would do admirably. + +"I understood from Mrs. Adding," he concluded, "that you were going. +there for your after-cure, Mr. March, and I didn't know but you might be +going soon." + +At the mention of Schevleningen the Marches had looked at each other with +a guilty alarm, which they both tried to give the cast of affectionate +sympathy but she dismissed her fear that he might be going to let his +compassion prevail with him to his hurt when he said: "Why, we ought to +have been there before this, but I've been taking my life in my hands in +trying to see a little of Germany, and I'm afraid now that Mrs. March has +her mind too firmly fixed on Berlin to let me think of going to +Schevleningen till we've been there." + +"It's too bad!" said Mrs. March, with real regret. "I wish we were +going." But she had not the least notion of gratifying her wish; and +they were all silent till Kenby broke out: + +"Look here! You know how I feel about Mrs Adding! I've been pretty +frank with Mr. March myself, and I've had my suspicions that she's been +frank with you, Mrs. March. There isn't any doubt about my wanting to +marry her, and up to this time there hasn't been any doubt about her not +wanting to marry me. But it isn't a question of her or of me, now. It's +a question of Rose. I love the boy," and Kenby's voice shook, and he +faltered a moment. "Pshaw! You understand." + +"Indeed I do, Mr. Kenby," said Mrs. March. "I perfectly understand +you." + +"Well, I don't think Mrs. Adding is fit to make the journey with him +alone, or to place herself in the best way after she gets to +Schevleningen. She's been badly shaken up; she broke down before the +doctor; she said she didn't know what to do; I suppose she's +frightened--" + +Kenby stopped again, and March asked, "When is she going?" + +"To-morrow," said Kenby, and he added, "And now the question is, why +shouldn't I go with her?" + +Mrs. March gave a little start, and looked at her husband, but he said +nothing, and Kenby seemed not to have supposed that he would say +anything. + +"I know it would be very American, and all that, but I happen to be an +American, and it wouldn't be out of character for me. I suppose," he +appealed to Mrs. March, "that it's something I might offer to do if it +were from New York to Florida--and I happened to be going there? And I +did happen to be going to Holland." + +"Why, of course, Mr. Kenby," she responded, with such solemnity that +March gave way in an outrageous laugh. + +Kenby laughed, and Mrs. March laughed too, but with an inner note of +protest. + +"Well," Kenby continued, still addressing her, "what I want you to do is +to stand by me when I propose it." + +Mrs. March gathered strength to say, "No, Mr. Kenby, it's your own +affair, and you must take the responsibility." + +"Do you disapprove?" + +"It isn't the same as it would be at home. You see that yourself." + +"Well," said Kenby, rising, "I have to arrange about their getting away +to-morrow. It won't be easy in this hurly-burly that's coming off." + +"Give Rose our love; and tell Mrs. Adding that I'll come round and see +her to-morrow before she starts." + +"Oh! I'm afraid you can't, Mrs. March. They're to start at six in the +morning." + +"They are! Then we must go and see them tonight. We'll be there almost +as soon as you are." + +March went up to their rooms with, his wife, and she began on the stairs: + +"Well, my dear, I hope you realize that your laughing so gave us +completely away. And what was there to keep grinning about, all +through?" + +"Nothing but the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always +the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself +off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection +for Rose, was more than I could stand. I don't apologize for laughing; +I wanted to yell." + +His effrontery and his philosophy both helped to save him; and she said +from the point where he had side-tracked her mind: "I don't call it +disingenuous. He was brutally frank. He's made it impossible to treat +the affair with dignity. I want you to leave the whole thing to me, from +this out. Now, will you?" + +On their way to the Spanischer Hof she arranged in her own mind for Mrs. +Adding to get a maid, and for the doctor to send an assistant with her on +the journey, but she was in such despair with her scheme that she had not +the courage to right herself when Mrs. Adding met her with the appeal: + +"Oh, Mrs. March, I'm so glad you approve of Mr. Kenby's plan. It does +seem the only thing to do. I can't trust myself alone with Rose, and Mr. +Kenby's intending to go to Schevleningen a few days later anyway. Though +it's too bad to let him give up the manoeuvres." + +"I'm sure he won't mind that," Mrs. March's voice said mechanically, +while her thought was busy with the question whether this scandalous +duplicity was altogether Kenby's, and whether Mrs. Adding was as +guiltless of any share in it as she looked. She looked pitifully +distracted; she might not have understood his report; or Kenby might +really have mistaken Mrs. March's sympathy for favor. + +"No, he only lives to do good," Mrs. Adding returned. "He's with Rose; +won't you come in and see them?" + +Rose was lying back on the pillows of a sofa, from which they would not +let him get up. He was full of the trip to Holland, and had already +pushed Kenby, as Kenby owned, beyond the bounds of his very general +knowledge of the Dutch language, which Rose had plans for taking up after +they were settled in Schevleningen. The boy scoffed at the notion that +he was not perfectly well, and he wished to talk with March on the points +where he had found Kenby wanting. + +"Kenby is an encyclopaedia compared with me, Rose," the editor protested, +and he amplified his ignorance for the boy's good to an extent which Rose +saw was a joke. He left Holland to talk about other things which his +mother thought quite as bad for him. He wished to know if March did not +think that the statue of the bishop with the sparrow on its finger was a +subject for a poem; and March said gayly that if Rose would write it he +would print it in 'Every Other Week'. + +The boy flushed with pleasure at his banter. "No, I couldn't do it. +But I wish Mr. Burnamy had seen it. He could. Will you tell him about +it?" He wanted to know if March had heard from Burnamy lately, and in +the midst of his vivid interest he gave a weary sigh. + +His mother said that now he had talked enough, and bade him say good-by +to the Marches, who were coming so soon to Holland, anyway. Mrs. March +put her arms round him to kiss him, and when she let him sink back her +eyes were dim. + +"You see how frail he is?" said Mrs. Adding. "I shall not let him out of +my sight, after this, till he's well again." + +She had a kind of authority in sending Kenby away with them which was not +lost upon the witnesses. He asked them to come into the reading-room a +moment with him, and Mrs. March wondered if he were going to make some +excuse to her for himself; but he said: "I don't know how we're to manage +about the Triscoes. The general will have a room to himself, but if Mrs. +Adding takes Rose in with her, it leaves Miss Triscoe out, and there +isn't a room to be had in this house for love or money. Do you think," +he appealed directly to Mrs. March, "that it would do to offer her my +room at the Swan?" + +"Why, yes," she assented, with a reluctance rather for the complicity in +which he had already involved her, and for which he was still unpunished, +than for what he was now proposing. "Or she could come in with me, and +Mr. March could take it." + +"Whichever you think," said Kenby so submissively that she relented, to +ask: + +"And what will you do?" + +He laughed. "Well, people have been known to sleep in a chair. I shall +manage somehow." + +"You might offer to go in with the general," March suggested, and the men +apparently thought this was a joke. Mrs. March did not laugh in her +feminine worry about ways and means. + +"Where is Miss Triscoe?" she asked. "We haven't seen them." + +"Didn't Mrs. Adding tell you? They went to supper at a restaurant; the +general doesn't like the cooking here. They ought to have been back +before this." + +He looked up at the clock on the wall, and she said, "I suppose you would +like us to wait." + +"It would be very kind of you." + +"Oh, it's quite essential," she returned with an airy freshness which +Kenby did not seem to feel as painfully as he ought. + +They all sat down, and the Triscoes came in after a few minutes, and a +cloud on the general's face lifted at the proposition Kenby left Mrs. +March to make. + +"I thought that child ought to be in his mother's charge," he said. With +his own comfort provided for, he made no objections to Mrs. March's plan; +and Agatha went to take leave of Rose and his mother. "By-the-way," the +general turned to March, "I found Stoller at the restaurant where we +supped. He offered me a place in his carriage for the manoeuvres. How +are you going?" + +"I think I shall go by train. I don't fancy the long drive." + +"Well, I don't know that it's worse than the long walk after you leave +the train," said the general from the offence which any difference of +taste was apt to give him. "Are you going by train, too?" he asked Kenby +with indifference. + +"I'm not going at all," said Kenby. "I'm leaving Wurzburg in the +morning." + +"Oh, indeed," said the general. + +Mrs. March could not make out whether he knew that Kenby was going with +Rose and Mrs. Adding, but she felt that there must be a full and open +recognition of the fact among them. "Yes," she said, "isn't it fortunate +that Mr. Kenby should be going to Holland, too! I should have been so +unhappy about them if Mrs. Adding had been obliged to make that long +journey with poor little Rose alone." + +"Yes, yes; very fortunate, certainly," said the general colorlessly. + +Her husband gave her a glance of intelligent appreciation; but Kenby was +too simply, too densely content with the situation to know the value of +what she had done. She thought he must certainly explain, as he walked +back with her to the Swan, whether he had misrepresented her to Mrs. +Adding, or Mrs. Adding had misunderstood him. Somewhere there had been +an error, or a duplicity which it was now useless to punish; and Kenby +was so apparently unconscious of it that she had not the heart to be +cross with him. She heard Miss Triscoe behind her with March laughing in +the gayety which the escape from her father seemed to inspire in her. +She was promising March to go with him in the morning to see the Emperor +and Empress of Germany arrive at the station, and he was warning her that +if she laughed there, like that, she would subject him to fine and +imprisonment. She pretended that she would like to see him led off +between two gendarmes, but consented to be a little careful when he asked +her how she expected to get back to her hotel without him, if such a +thing happened. + + + + +LVIII. + +After all, Miss Triscoe did not go with March; she preferred to sleep. +The imperial party was to arrive at half past seven, but at six the crowd +was already dense before the station, and all along the street leading to +the Residenz. It was a brilliant day, with the promise of sunshine, +through which a chilly wind blew, for the manoeuvres. The colors of all +the German states flapped in this breeze from the poles wreathed with +evergreen which encircled the square; the workmen putting the last +touches on the bronzed allegory hurried madly to be done, and they had, +scarcely finished their labors when two troops of dragoons rode into the +place and formed before the station, and waited as motionlessly as their +horses would allow. + +These animals were not so conscious as lions at the approach of princes; +they tossed and stamped impatiently in the long interval before the +Regent and his daughter-in-law came to welcome their guests. All the +human beings, both those who were in charge and those who were under +charge, were in a quiver of anxiety to play their parts well, as if there +were some heavy penalty for failure in the least point. The policemen +keeping the people, in line behind the ropes which restrained them +trembled with eagerness; the faces of some of the troopers twitched. +An involuntary sigh went up from the crowd as the Regent's carriage +appeared, heralded by outriders, and followed by other plain carriages of +Bavarian blue with liveries of blue and silver. Then the whistle of the +Kaiser's train sounded; a trumpeter advanced and began to blow his +trumpet as they do in the theatre; and exactly at the appointed moment +the Emperor and Empress came out of the station through the brilliant +human alley leading from it, mounted their carriages, with the stage +trumpeter always blowing, and whirled swiftly round half the square and +flashed into the corner toward the Residenz out of sight. The same +hollow groans of Ho-o-o-ch greeted and followed them from the spectators +as had welcomed the Regent when he first arrived among his fellow- +townsmen, with the same effect of being the conventional cries of a stage +mob behind the scenes. + +The Emperor was like most of his innumerable pictures, with a swarthy +face from which his blue eyes glanced pleasantly; he looked good-humored +if not good-natured; the Empress smiled amiably beneath her deeply +fringed white parasol, and they both bowed right and left in +acknowledgment of those hollow groans; but again it seemed, to March that +sovereignty, gave the popular curiosity, not to call it devotion, a +scantier return than it merited. He had perhaps been insensibly working +toward some such perception as now came to him that the great difference +between Europe and America was that in Europe life is histrionic and +dramatized, and that in America, except when it is trying to be European, +it is direct and sincere. He wondered whether the innate conviction of +equality, the deep, underlying sense of a common humanity transcending +all social and civic pretences, was what gave their theatrical effect to +the shows of deference from low to high, and of condescension from high +to low. If in such encounters of sovereigns and subjects, the prince did +not play his part so well as the people, it might be that he had a harder +part to play, and that to support his dignity at all, to keep from being +found out the sham that he essentially was, he had to hurry across the +stage amidst the distracting thunders of the orchestra. If the star +staid to be scrutinized by the soldiers, citizens, and so forth, even the +poor supernumeraries and scene-shifters might see that he was a tallow +candle like themselves. + +In the censorious mood induced by the reflection that he had waited an +hour and a half for half a minute's glimpse of the imperial party, March +now decided not to go to the manoeuvres, where he might be subjected to +still greater humiliation and disappointment. He had certainly come to +Wurzburg for the manoeuvres, but Wurzburg had been richly repaying in +itself; and why should he stifle half an hour in an overcrowded train, +and struggle for three miles on foot against that harsh wind, to see a +multitude of men give proofs of their fitness to do manifold murder? +He was, in fact, not the least curious for the sight, and the only thing +that really troubled him was the question of how he should justify his +recreance to his wife. This did alloy the pleasure with which he began, +after an excellent breakfast at a neighboring cafe, to stroll about the +streets, though he had them almost to himself, so many citizens had +followed the soldiers to the manoeuvres. + +It was not till the soldiers began returning from the manoeuvres, dusty- +footed, and in white canvas overalls drawn over their trousers to save +them, that he went back to Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe at the Swan. He +had given them time enough to imagine him at the review, and to wonder +whether he had seen General Triscoe and the Stollers there, and they met +him with such confident inquiries that he would not undeceive them at +once. He let them divine from his inventive answers that he had not gone +to the manoeuvres, which put them in the best humor with themselves, and +the girl said it was so cold and rough that she wished her father had not +gone, either. The general appeared just before dinner and frankly avowed +the same wish. He was rasping and wheezing from the dust which filled +his lungs; he looked blown and red, and he was too angry with the company +he had been in to have any comments on the manoeuvres. He referred to +the military chiefly in relation to the Miss Stollers' ineffectual +flirtations, which he declared had been outrageous. Their father had +apparently no control over them whatever, or else was too ignorant to +know that they were misbehaving. They were without respect or reverence +for any one; they had talked to General Triscoe as if he were a boy of +their own age, or a dotard whom nobody need mind; they had not only kept +up their foolish babble before him, they had laughed and giggled, they +had broken into snatches of American song, they had all but whistled and +danced. They made loud comments in Illinois English--on the cuteness of +the officers whom they admired, and they had at one time actually got out +their handkerchiefs. He supposed they meant to wave them at the +officers, but at the look he gave them they merely put their hats +together and snickered in derision of him. They were American girls of +the worst type; they conformed to no standard of behavior; their conduct +was personal. They ought to be taken home. + +Mrs. March said she saw what he meant, and she agreed with him that they +were altogether unformed, and were the effect of their own ignorant +caprices. Probably, however, it was too late to amend them by taking +them away. + +"It would hide them, at any rate," he answered. "They would sink back +into the great mass of our vulgarity, and not be noticed. We behave like +a parcel of peasants with our women. We think that if no harm is meant +or thought, we may risk any sort of appearance, and we do things that are +scandalously improper simply because they are innocent. That may be all +very well at home, but people who prefer that sort of thing had better +stay there, where our peasant manners won't make them conspicuous." + +As their train ran northward out of Wurzburg that afternoon, Mrs. March +recurred to the general's closing words. "That was a slap at Mrs. Adding +for letting Kenby go off with her." + +She took up the history of the past twenty-four hours, from the time +March had left her with Miss Triscoe when he went with her father and the +Addings and Kenby to see that church. She had had no chance to bring up +these arrears until now, and she atoned to herself for the delay by +making the history very full, and going back and adding touches at any +point where she thought she had scanted it. After all, it consisted +mainly of fragmentary intimations from Miss Triscoe and of half-uttered +questions which her own art now built into a coherent statement. + +March could not find that the general had much resented Burnamy's +clandestine visit to Carlsbad when his daughter told him of it, or that +he had done more than make her promise that she would not keep up the +acquaintance upon any terms unknown to him. + +"Probably," Mrs. March said, "as long as he had any hopes of Mrs. Adding, +he was a little too self-conscious to be very up and down about Burnamy." + +"Then you think he was really serious about her?" + +"Now my dear! He was so serious that I suppose he was never so +completely taken aback in his life as when he met Kenby in Wurzburg and +saw how she received him. Of course, that put an end to the fight." + +"The fight?" + +"Yes--that Mrs. Adding and Agatha were keeping up to prevent his offering +himself." + +"Oh! And how do you know that they were keeping up the fight together?" + +"How do I? Didn't you see yourself what friends they were? Did you tell +him what Stoller had, said about Burnamy?" + +"I had no chance. I don't know that I should have done it, anyway. It +wasn't my affair." + +"Well, then, I think you might. It would have been everything for that +poor child; it would have completely justified her in her own eyes." + +"Perhaps your telling her will serve the same purpose." + +"Yes, I did tell her, and I am glad of it. She had a right to know it." + +"Did she think Stoller's willingness to overlook Burnamy's performance +had anything to do with its moral quality?" + +Mrs. March was daunted for the moment, but she said, "I told her you +thought that if a person owned to a fault they disowned it, and put it +away from them just as if it had never been committed; and that if a +person had taken their punishment for a wrong they had done, they had +expiated it so far as anybody else was concerned. And hasn't poor +Burnamy done both?" + +As a moralist March was flattered to be hoist with his own petard, but as +a husband he was not going to come down at once. "I thought probably you +had told her that. You had it pat from having just been over it with me. +When has she heard from him?" + +"Why, that's the strangest thing about it. She hasn't heard at all. She +doesn't know where he is. She thought we must know. She was terribly +broken up." + +"How did she show it?" + +"She didn't show it. Either you want to tease, or you've forgotten how +such things are with young people--or at least girls." + +"Yes, it's all a long time ago with me, and I never was a girl. Besides, +the frank and direct behavior of Kenby and Mrs. Adding has been very +obliterating to my early impressions of love-making." + +"It certainly hasn't been ideal," said Mrs. March with a sigh. + +"Why hasn't it been ideal?" he asked. "Kenby is tremendously in love +with her; and I believe she's had a fancy for him from the beginning. +If it hadn't been for Rose she would have accepted him at once; and now +he's essential to them both in their helplessness. As for Papa Triscoe +and his Europeanized scruples, if they have any reality at all they're +the residuum of his personal resentment, and Kenby and Mrs. Adding have +nothing to do with their unreality. His being in love with her is no +reason why he shouldn't be helpful to her when she needs him, and every +reason why he should. I call it a poem, such as very few people have the +luck to live out together." + +Mrs. March listened with mounting fervor, and when he stopped, she cried +out, "Well, my dear, I do believe you are right! It is ideal, as you +say; it's a perfect poem. And I shall always say--" + +She stopped at the mocking light which she caught in his look, and +perceived that he had been amusing himself with her perennial enthusiasm +for all sorts of love-affairs. But she averred that she did not care; +what he had said was true, and she should always hold him to it. + +They were again in the wedding-journey sentiment in which they had left +Carlsbad, when they found themselves alone together after their escape +from the pressure of others' interests. The tide of travel was towards +Frankfort, where the grand parade was to take place some days later. +They were going to Weimar, which was so few hours out of their way that +they simply must not miss it; and all the way to the old literary capital +they were alone in their compartment, with not even a stranger, much less +a friend to molest them. The flying landscape without was of their own +early autumnal mood, and when the vineyards of Wurzburg ceased to purple +it, the heavy after-math of hay and clover, which men, women, and +children were loading on heavy wains, and driving from the meadows +everywhere, offered a pastoral and pleasing change. It was always the +German landscape; sometimes flat and fertile, sometimes hilly and poor; +often clothed with dense woods, but always charming, with castled tops in +ruin or repair, and with levels where Gothic villages drowsed within +their walls, and dreamed of the mediaeval past, silent, without apparent +life, except for some little goose-girl driving her flock before her as +she sallied out into the nineteenth century in search of fresh pasturage. + +As their train mounted among the Thuringian uplands they were aware of a +finer, cooler air through their open window. The torrents foamed white +out of the black forests of fir and pine, and brawled along the valleys, +where the hamlets roused themselves in momentary curiosity as the train +roared into them from the many tunnels. The afternoon sunshine had the +glister of mountain sunshine everywhere, and the travellers had a +pleasant bewilderment in which their memories of Switzerland and the +White Mountains mixed with long-dormant emotions from Adirondack +sojourns. They chose this place and that in the lovely region where they +lamented that they had not come at once for the after-cure, and they +appointed enough returns to it in future years to consume all the summers +they had left to live. + + + +LIX. + +It was falling night when they reached Weimar, where they found at the +station a provision of omnibuses far beyond the hotel accommodations. +They drove first to the Crown-Prince, which was in a promising state of +reparation, but which for the present could only welcome them to an +apartment where a canvas curtain cut them off from a freshly plastered +wall. The landlord deplored the fact, and sent hospitably out to try and +place them at the Elephant. But the Elephant was full, and the Russian +Court was full too. Then the landlord of the Crown-Prince bethought +himself of a new hotel, of the second class, indeed, but very nice, where +they might get rooms, and after the delay of an hour, they got a carriage +and drove away from the Crown-Prince, where the landlord continued to the +last as benevolent as if they had been a profit instead of a loss to him. + +The streets of the town at nine o'clock were empty and quiet, and they +instantly felt the academic quality of the place. Through the pale night +they could see that the architecture was of the classic sentiment which +they were destined to feel more and more; at one point they caught a +fleeting glimpse of two figures with clasped hands and half embraced, +which they knew for the statues of Goethe and Schiller; and when they +mounted to their rooms at the Grand-Duke of Saxe-Weimar, they passed +under a fresco representing Goethe and four other world-famous poets, +Shakspere, Milton, Tasso, and Schiller. The poets all looked like +Germans, as was just, and Goethe was naturally chief among them; he +marshalled the immortals on their way, and Schiller brought up the rear +and kept them from going astray in an Elysium where they did not speak +the language. For the rest, the hotel was brand-new, of a quite American +freshness, and was pervaded by a sweet smell as of straw matting, and +provided with steam-radiators. In the sense of its homelikeness the +Marches boasted that they were never going away from it. + +In the morning they discovered that their windows looked out on the +grand-ducal museum, with a gardened space before and below its +classicistic bulk, where, in a whim of the weather, the gay flowers were +full of sun. In a pleasant illusion of taking it unawares, March +strolled up through the town; but Weimar was as much awake at that hour +as at any of the twenty-four, and the tranquillity of its streets, where +he encountered a few passers several blocks apart, was their habitual +mood. He came promptly upon two objects which he would willingly have +shunned: a 'denkmal' of the Franco-German war, not so furiously bad as +most German monuments, but antipathetic and uninteresting, as all +patriotic monuments are; and a woman-and-dog team. In the shock from +this he was sensible that he had not seen any woman-and-dog teams for +some time, and he wondered by what civic or ethnic influences their +distribution was so controlled that they should have abounded in Hamburg, +Leipsic, and Carlsbad, and wholly ceased in Nuremberg, Ansbach, and +Wurzburg, to reappear again in Weimar, though they seemed as +characteristic of all Germany as the ugly denkmals to her victories over +France. + +The Goethe and Schiller monument which he had glimpsed the night before +was characteristic too, but less offensively so. German statues at the +best are conscious; and the poet-pair, as the inscription calls them, +have the air of showily confronting posterity with their clasped hands, +and of being only partially rapt from the spectators. But they were more +unconscious than any other German statues that March had seen, and he +quelled a desire to ask Goethe, as he stood with his hand on Schiller's +shoulder, and looked serenely into space far above one of the typical +equipages of his country, what he thought of that sort of thing. But +upon reflection he did not know why Goethe should be held personally +responsible for the existence of the woman-and-dog team. He felt that he +might more reasonably attribute to his taste the prevalence of classic +profiles which he began to note in the Weimar populace. This could be a +sympathetic effect of that passion for the antique which the poet brought +back with him from his sojourn in Italy; though many of the people, +especially the children, were bow-legged. Perhaps the antique had: begun +in their faces, and had not yet got down to their legs; in any case they +were charming children, and as a test of their culture, he had a mind to +ask a little girl if she could tell him where the statue of Herder was, +which he thought he might as well take in on his ramble, and so be done +with as many statues as he could. She answered with a pretty regret in +her tender voice, "That I truly cannot," and he was more satisfied than +if she could, for he thought it better to be a child and honest, than to +know where any German statue was. + +He easily found it for himself in the place which is called the Herder +Platz after it. He went into the Peter and Paul Church there; where +Herder used to preach sermons, sometimes not at all liked by the nobility +and gentry for their revolutionary tendency; the sovereign was shielded +from the worst effects of his doctrine by worshipping apart from other +sinners in a glazed gallery. Herder is buried in the church, and when +you ask where, the sacristan lifts a wooden trap-door in the pavement, +and you think you are going down into the crypt, but you are only to see +Herder's monumental stone, which is kept covered so to save it from +passing feet. Here also is the greatest picture of that great soul Luke +Kranach, who had sincerity enough in his paining to atone for all the +swelling German sculptures in the world. It is a crucifixion, and the +cross is of a white birch log, such as might have been cut out of the +Weimar woods, shaved smooth on the sides, with the bark showing at the +edges. Kranach has put himself among the spectators, and a stream of +blood from the side of the Savior falls in baptism upon the painter's +head. He is in the company of John the Baptist and Martin Luther; Luther +stands with his Bible open, and his finger on the line, "The blood of +Jesus cleanseth us." + +Partly because he felt guilty at doing all these things without his wife, +and partly because he was now very hungry, March turned from them and got +back to his hotel, where she was looking out for him from their open +window. She had the air of being long domesticated there, as she laughed +down at seeing him come; and the continued brilliancy of the weather +added to the illusion of home. + +It was like a day of late spring in Italy or America; the sun in that +gardened hollow before the museum was already hot enough to make him glad +of the shelter of the hotel. The summer seemed to have come back to +oblige them, and when they learned that they were to see Weimar in a +festive mood because this was Sedan Day, their curiosity, if not their +sympathy, accepted the chance gratefully. But they were almost moved to +wish that the war had gone otherwise when they learned that all the +public carriages were engaged, and they must have one from a stable if +they wished to drive after breakfast. Still it was offered them for such +a modest number of marks, and their driver proved so friendly and +conversable, that they assented to the course of history, and were more +and more reconciled as they bowled along through the grand-ducal park +beside the waters of the classic Ilm. + +The waters of the classic Ilm are sluggish and slimy in places, and in +places clear and brooklike, but always a dull dark green in color. They +flow in the shadow of pensive trees, and by the brinks of sunny meadows, +where the after-math wanders in heavy windrows, and the children sport +joyously over the smooth-mown surfaces in all the freedom that there is +in Germany. At last, after immemorial appropriation the owners of the +earth are everywhere expropriated, and the people come into the pleasure +if not the profit of it. At last, the prince, the knight, the noble +finds, as in his turn the plutocrat will find, that his property is not +for him, but for all; and that the nation is to enjoy what he takes from +it and vainly thinks to keep from it. Parks, pleasaunces, gardens, set +apart for kings, are the play-grounds of the landless poor in the Old +World, and perhaps yield the sweetest joy of privilege to some state-sick +ruler, some world-weary princess, some lonely child born to the solitude +of sovereignty, as they each look down from their palace windows upon the +leisure of overwork taking its little holiday amidst beauty vainly +created for the perpetual festival of their empty lives. + +March smiled to think that in this very Weimar, where sovereignty had +graced and ennobled itself as nowhere else in the world by the +companionship of letters and the arts, they still were not hurrying first +to see the palace of a prince, but were involuntarily making it second to +the cottage of a poet. But in fact it is Goethe who is forever the +prince in Weimar. His greatness blots out its history, his name fills +the city; the thought of him is its chiefest imitation and largest +hospitality. The travellers remembered, above all other facts of the +grand-ducal park, that it was there he first met Christiane Vulpius, +beautiful and young, when he too was beautiful and young, and took her +home to be his love, to the just and lasting displeasure of Fran von +Stein, who was even less reconciled when, after eighteen years of due +reflection, the love of Goethe and Christiane became their marriage. +They, wondered just where it was he saw the young girl coming to meet him +as the Grand-Duke's minister with an office-seeking petition from her +brother, Goethe's brother author, long famed and long forgotten for his +romantic tale of "Rinaldo Rinaldini." + +They had indeed no great mind, in their American respectability, for that +rather matter-of-fact and deliberate liaison, and little as their +sympathy was for the passionless intellectual intrigue with the Frau von +Stein, it cast no halo of sentiment about the Goethe cottage to suppose +that there his love-life with Christiane began. Mrs. March even resented +the fact, and when she learned later that it was not the fact at all, she +removed it from her associations with the pretty place almost +indignantly. + +In spite of our facile and multiple divorces we Americans are worshipers +of marriage, and if a great poet, the minister of a prince, is going to +marry a poor girl, we think he had better not wait till their son is +almost of age. Mrs. March would not accept as extenuating circumstances +the Grand-Duke's godfatherhood, or Goethe's open constancy to Christiane, +or the tardy consecration of their union after the French sack of, +Weimar, when the girl's devotion had saved him from the rudeness of the +marauding soldiers. For her New England soul there were no degrees in +such guilt; and, perhaps there are really not so many as people have +tried to think, in their deference to Goethe's greatness. But certainly +the affair was not so simple for a grand-ducal minister of world-wide +renown, and he might well have felt its difficulties, for he could not +have been proof against the censorious public opinion of Weimar, or the +yet more censorious private opinion of Fran von Stein. + +On that lovely Italo-American morning no ghost of these old dead +embarrassments lingered within or without the Goethe garden-house. +The trees which the poet himself planted flung a sun-shot shadow upon it, +and about its feet basked a garden of simple flowers, from which the +sweet lame girl who limped through the rooms and showed them, gathered a +parting nosegay for her visitors. The few small livingrooms were above +the ground-floor, with kitchen and offices below in the Italian fashion; +in one of the little chambers was the camp-bed which Goethe carried with +him on his journeys through Italy; and in the larger room at the front +stood the desk where he wrote, with the chair before it from which he +might just have risen. + +All was much more livingly conscious of the great man gone than the proud +little palace in the town, which so abounds with relics and memorials of +him. His library, his study, his study table, with everything on it just +as he left it when + + "Cadde la stanca mana." + +are there, and there is the death-chair facing the window, from which he +gasped for "more light" at last. The handsome, well-arranged rooms are +full of souvenirs of his travel, and of that passion for Italy which he +did so much to impart to all German hearts, and whose modern waning +leaves its records here of an interest pathetically, almost amusingly, +faded. They intimate the classic temper to which his mind tended more +and more, and amidst the multitude of sculptures, pictures, prints, +drawings, gems, medals, autographs, there is the sense of the many- +mindedness, the universal taste, for which he found room in little +Weimar, but not in his contemporaneous Germany. But it is all less +keenly personal, less intimate than the simple garden-house, or else, +with the great troop of people going through it, and the custodians +lecturing in various voices and languages to the attendant groups, the +Marches had it less to themselves, and so imagined him less in it. + + + + +LX. + +All palaces have a character of tiresome unlivableness which is common to +them everywhere, and very probably if one could meet their proprietors in +them one would as little remember them apart afterwards as the palaces +themselves. It will not do to lift either houses or men far out of the +average; they become spectacles, ceremonies; they cease to have charm, to +have character, which belong to the levels of life, where alone there are +ease and comfort, and human nature may be itself, with all the little +delightful differences repressed in those who represent and typify. + +As they followed the custodian through the grand-ducal Residenz at +Weimar, March felt everywhere the strong wish of the prince who was +Goethe's friend to ally himself with literature, and to be human at least +in the humanities. He came honestly by his passion for poets; his mother +had known it in her time, and Weimar was the home of Wieland and of +Herder before the young Grand-Duke came back from his travels bringing +Goethe with him, and afterwards attracting Schiller. The story of that +great epoch is all there in the Residenz, told as articulately as a +palace can. + +There are certain Poets' Rooms, frescoed with illustrations of Goethe, +Schiller, and Wieland; there is the room where Goethe and the Grand-Duke +used to play chess together; there is the conservatory opening from it +where they liked to sit and chat; everywhere in the pictures and +sculptures, the engraving and intaglios, are the witnesses of the tastes +they shared, the love they both had for Italy, and for beautiful Italian +things. The prince was not so great a prince but that he could very +nearly be a man; the court was perhaps the most human court that ever +was; the Grand-Duke and the grand poet were first boon companions, and +then monarch and minister working together for the good of the country; +they were always friends, and yet, as the American saw in the light of +the New World, which he carried with him, how far from friends! At best +it was make-believe, the make-believe of superiority and inferiority, the +make-believe of master and man, which could only be the more painful and +ghastly for the endeavor of two generous spirits to reach and rescue each +other through the asphyxiating unreality; but they kept up the show of +equality faithfully to the end. Goethe was born citizen of a free +republic, and his youth was nurtured in the traditions of liberty; he was +one of the greatest souls of any time, and he must have known the +impossibility of the thing they pretended; but he died and made no sign, +and the poet's friendship with the prince has passed smoothly into +history as one of the things that might really be. They worked and +played together; they dined and danced, they picnicked and poetized, each +on his own side of the impassable gulf; with an air of its not being +there which probably did not deceive their contemporaries so much as +posterity. + +A part of the palace was of course undergoing repair; and in the gallery +beyond the conservatory a company of workmen were sitting at a table +where they had spread their luncheon. They were somewhat subdued by the +consciousness of their august environment; but the sight of them was +charming; they gave a kindly interest to the place which it had wanted +before; and which the Marches felt again in another palace where the +custodian showed them the little tin dishes and saucepans which the +German Empress Augusta and her sisters played with when they were +children. The sight of these was more affecting even than the withered +wreaths which they had left on the death-bed of their mother, and which +are still mouldering there. + +This was in the Belvedere, the country house on the height overlooking +Weimar, where the grand-ducal family spend the month of May, and where +the stranger finds himself amid overwhelming associations of Goethe, +although the place is so full of relics and memorials of the owners. +It seemed in fact to be a storehouse for the wedding-presents of the +whole connection, which were on show in every room; Mrs. March hardly +knew whether they heightened the domestic effect or took from it; but +they enabled her to verify with the custodian's help certain royal +intermarriages which she had been in doubt about before. + +Her zeal for these made such favor with him that he did not spare them a +portrait of all those which March hoped to escape; he passed them over, +scarcely able to stand, to the gardener, who was to show them the open- +air theatre where Goethe used to take part in the plays. + +The Natur-Theater was of a classic ideal, realized in the trained vines +and clipped trees which formed the coulisses. There was a grassy space +for the chorus and the commoner audience, and then a few semicircular +gradines cut in the turf, one alcove another, where the more honored +spectators sat. Behind the seats were plinths bearing the busts of +Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder. It was all very pretty, and if +ever the weather in Weimar was dry enough to permit a performance, it +must have been charming to see a play in that open day to which the drama +is native, though in the late hours it now keeps in the thick air of +modern theatres it has long forgotten the fact. It would be difficult to +be Greek under a German sky, even when it was not actually raining, but +March held that with Goethe's help it might have been done at Weimar, and +his wife and he proved themselves such enthusiasts for the Natur-Theater +that the walnut-faced old gardener who showed it put together a sheaf of +the flowers that grew nearest it and gave them to Mrs. March for a +souvenir. + +They went for a cup of tea to the cafe which looks, as from another +eyebrow of the hill, out over lovely little Weimar in the plain below. +In a moment of sunshine the prospect was very smiling; but their spirits +sank over their tea when it came; they were at least sorry they had not +asked for coffee. Most of the people about them were taking beer, +including the pretty girls of a young ladies' school, who were there with +their books and needle-work, in the care of one of the teachers, +apparently for the afternoon. + +Mrs. March perceived that they were not so much engaged with their books +or their needle-work but they had eyes for other things, and she followed +the glances of the girls till they rested upon the people at a table +somewhat obliquely to the left. These were apparently a mother and +daughter, and they were listening to a young man who sat with his back to +Mrs. March, and leaned low over the table talking to them. They were +both smiling radiantly, and as the girl smiled she kept turning herself +from the waist up, and slanting her face from this side to that, as if to +make sure that every one saw her smiling. + +Mrs. March felt her husband's gaze following her own, and she had just +time to press her finger firmly on his arm and reduce his cry of +astonishment to the hoarse whisper in which he gasped, "Good gracious! +It's the pivotal girl!" + +At the same moment the girl rose with her mother, and with the young man, +who had risen too, came directly toward the Marches on their way out of +the place without noticing them, though Burnamy passed so near that Mrs. +March could almost have touched him. + +She had just strength to say, "Well, my dear! That was the cut direct." + +She said this in order to have her husband reassure her. "Nonsense! He +never saw us. Why didn't you speak to him?" + +"Speak to him? I never shall speak to him again. No! This is the last +of Mr. Burnamy for me. I shouldn't have minded his not recognizing us, +for, as you say, I don't believe he saw us; but if he could go back to +such a girl as that, and flirt with her, after Miss Triscoe, that's all I +wish to know of him. Don't you try to look him up, Basil! I'm glad- +yes, I'm glad he doesn't know how Stoller has come to feel about him; he +deserves to suffer, and I hope he'll keep on suffering: You were quite +right, my dear--and it shows how true your instinct is in such things (I +don't call it more than instinct)--not to tell him what Stoller said, and +I don't want you ever should." + +She had risen in her excitement, and was making off in such haste that +she would hardly give him time to pay for their tea, as she pulled him +impatiently to their carriage. + +At last he got a chance to say, "I don't think I can quite promise that; +my mind's been veering round in the other direction. I think I shall +tell him." + +"What! After you've seen him flirting with that girl? Very well, then, +you won't, my dear; that's all! He's behaving very basely to Agatha." + +"What's his flirtation with all the girls in the universe to do with my +duty to him? He has a right to know what Stoller thinks. And as to his +behaving badly toward Miss Triscoe, how has he done it? So far as you +know, there is nothing whatever between them. She either refused him +outright, that last night in Carlsbad, or else she made impossible +conditions with him. Burnamy is simply consoling himself, and I don't +blame him." + +"Consoling himself with a pivotal girl!" cried Mrs. March. + +"Yes, with a pivotal girl. Her pivotality may be a nervous idiosyncrasy, +or it may be the effect of tight lacing; perhaps she has to keep turning +and twisting that way to get breath. But attribute the worst motive: say +it is to make people look at her! Well, Burnamy has a right to look with +the rest; and I am not going to renounce him because he takes refuge with +one pretty girl from another. It's what men have been doing from the +beginning of time." + +"Oh, I dare say!" + +"Men," he went on, "are very delicately constituted; very peculiarly. +They have been known to seek the society of girls in general, of any +girl, because some girl has made them happy; and when some girl has made +them unhappy, they are still more susceptible. Burnamy may be merely +amusing himself, or he may be consoling himself; but in either case I +think the pivotal girl has as much right to him as Miss Triscoe. She had +him first; and I'm all for her." + + + + +LXI. + +Burnamy came away from seeing the pivotal girl and her mother off on the +train which they were taking that evening for Frankfort and Hombourg, and +strolled back through the Weimar streets little at ease with himself. +While he was with the girl and near her he had felt the attraction by +which youth impersonally draws youth, the charm which mere maid has for +mere man; but once beyond the range of this he felt sick at heart and +ashamed. He was aware of having used her folly as an anodyne for the +pain which was always gnawing at him, and he had managed to forget it in +her folly, but now it came back, and the sense that he had been reckless +of her rights came with it. He had done his best to make her think him +in love with her, by everything but words; he wondered how he could be +such an ass, such a wicked ass, as to try making her promise to write to +him from Frankfort; he wished never to see her again, and he wished still +less to hear from her. It was some comfort to reflect that she had not +promised, but it was not comfort enough to restore him to such +fragmentary self-respect as he had been enjoying since he parted with +Agatha Triscoe in Carlsbad; he could not even get back to the resentment +with which he had been staying himself somewhat before the pivotal girl +unexpectedly appeared with her mother in Weimar. + +It was Sedan Day, but there was apparently no official observance of the +holiday, perhaps because the Grand-Duke was away at the manoeuvres, with +all the other German princes. Burnamy had hoped for some voluntary +excitement among the people, at least enough to warrant him in making a +paper about Sedan Day in Weimar, which he could sell somewhere; but the +night was falling, and there was still no sign of popular rejoicing over +the French humiliation twenty-eight years before, except in the multitude +of Japanese lanterns which the children were everywhere carrying at the +ends of sticks. Babies had them in their carriages, and the effect of +the floating lights in the winding, up-and-down-hill streets was charming +even to Burnamy's lack-lustre eyes. He went by his hotel and on to a +cafe with a garden, where there was a patriotic, concert promised; he +supped there, and then sat dreamily behind his beer, while the music +banged and brayed round him unheeded. + +Presently he heard a voice of friendly banter saying in English, "May I +sit at your table?" and he saw an ironical face looking down on him. +"There doesn't seem any other place." + +"Why, Mr. March!" Burnamy sprang up and wrung the hand held out to him, +but he choked with his words of recognition; it was so good to see this +faithful friend again, though he saw him now as he had seen him last, +just when he had so little reason to be proud of himself. + +March settled his person in the chair facing Burnamy, and then glanced +round at the joyful jam of people eating and drinking, under a firmament +of lanterns. "This is pretty," he said, "mighty pretty. I shall make +Mrs. March sorry for not coming, when I go back." + +"Is Mrs. March--she is--with you--in Weimar?" Burnamy asked stupidly. + +March forbore to take advantage of him. "Oh, yes. We saw you out at +Belvedere this afternoon. Mrs. March thought for a moment that you meant +not to see us. A woman likes to exercise her imagination in those little +flights." + +"I never dreamed of your being there--I never saw--" Burnamy began. + +"Of course not. Neither did Mrs. Etkins, nor Miss Etkins; she was +looking very pretty. Have you been here some time?" + +"Not long. A week or so. I've been at the parade at Wurzburg." + +"At Wurzburg! Ah, how little the world is, or how large Wurzburg is! +We were there nearly a week, and we pervaded the place. But there was a +great crowd for you to hide in from us. What had I better take?" +A waiter had come up, and was standing at March's elbow. "I suppose I +mustn't sit here without ordering something?" + +"White wine and selters," said Burnamy vaguely. + +"The very thing! Why didn't I think of it? It's a divine drink: it +satisfies without filling. I had it a night or two before we left home, +in the Madison Square Roof Garden. Have you seen 'Every Other Week' +lately?" + +"No," said Burnamy, with more spirit than he had yet shown. + +"We've just got our mail from Nuremberg. The last number has a poem in +it that I rather like." March laughed to see the young fellow's face +light up with joyful consciousness. "Come round to my hotel, after +you're tired here, and I'll let you see it. There's no hurry. Did you +notice the little children with their lanterns, as you came along? It's +the gentlest effect that a warlike memory ever came to. The French +themselves couldn't have minded those innocents carrying those soft +lights on the day of their disaster. You ought to get something out of +that, and I've got a subject in trust for you from Rose Adding. He and +his mother were at Wurzburg; I'm sorry to say the poor little chap didn't +seem very well. They've gone to Holland for the sea air." March had +been talking for quantity in compassion of the embarrassment in which +Burnamy seemed bound; but he questioned how far he ought to bring comfort +to the young fellow merely because he liked him. So far as he could make +out, Burnamy had been doing rather less than nothing to retrieve himself +since they had met; and it was by an impulse that he could not have +logically defended to Mrs. March that he resumed. "We found another +friend of yours in Wurzburg: Mr. Stoller." + +"Mr. Stoller?" Burnamy faintly echoed. + +"Yes; he was there to give his daughters a holiday during the manoeuvres; +and they made the most of it. He wanted us to go to the parade with his +family but we declined. The twins were pretty nearly the death of +General Triscoe." + +Again Burnamy echoed him. "General Triscoe?" + +"Ah, yes: I didn't tell you. General Triscoe and his daughter had come +on with Mrs. Adding and Rose. Kenby--you remember Kenby, On the +Norumbia?--Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family party; +and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with him and +his girls." + +Now that he was launched, March rather enjoyed letting himself go. He +did not know what he should say to Mrs. March when he came to confess +having told Burnamy everything before she got a chance at him; he pushed +on recklessly, upon the principle, which probably will not hold in +morals, that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. "I have a +message for you from Mr. Stoller." + +"For me?" Burnamy gasped. + +"I've been wondering how I should put it, for I hadn't expected to see +you. But it's simply this: he wants you to know--and he seemed to want +me to know--that he doesn't hold you accountable in the way he did. He's +thought it all over, and he's decided that he had no right to expect you +to save him from his own ignorance where he was making a show of +knowledge. As he said, he doesn't choose to plead the baby act. He says +that you're all right, and your place on the paper is open to you." + +Burnamy had not been very prompt before, but now he seemed braced for +instant response. "I think he's wrong," he said, so harshly that the +people at the next table looked round. "His feeling as he does has +nothing to do with the fact, and it doesn't let me out." + +March would have liked to take him in his arms; he merely said, "I think +you're quite right, as to that. But there's such a thing as forgiveness, +you know. It doesn't change the nature of what you've done; but as far +as the sufferer from it is concerned, it annuls it." + +"Yes, I understand that. But I can't accept his forgiveness if I hate +him." + +"But perhaps you won't always hate him. Some day you may have a chance +to do him a good turn. It's rather banale; but there doesn't seem any +other way. Well, I have given you his message. Are you going with me to +get that poem?" + +When March had given Burnamy the paper at his hotel, and Burnamy had put +it in his pocket, the young man said he thought he would take some +coffee, and he asked March to join him in the dining-room where they had +stood talking. + +"No, thank you," said the elder, "I don't propose sitting up all night, +and you'll excuse me if I go to bed now. It's a little informal to leave +a guest--" + +"You're not leaving a guest! I'm at home here. I'm staying in this +hotel too." + +March said, "Oh!" and then he added abruptly, "Good-night," and went up +stairs under the fresco of the five poets. + +"Whom were you talking with below?" asked Mrs. March through the door +opening into his room from hers. + +"Burnamy," he answered from within. "He's staying in this house. He let +me know just as I was going to turn him out for the night. It's one of +those little uncandors of his that throw suspicion on his honesty in +great things." + +"Oh! Then you've been telling him," she said, with a mental bound high +above and far beyond the point. + +"Everything." + +"About Stoller, too?" + +"About Stoller and his daughters, and Mrs. Adding and Rose and Kenby and +General Triscoe--and Agatha." + +"Very well. That's what I call shabby. Don't ever talk to me again +about the inconsistencies of women. But now there's something perfectly +fearful." + +"What is it?" + +"A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find +rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow. He isn't well, and +they're coming. And I've telegraphed them to come here. Now what do you +say?" + + + + +LXII. + +They could see no way out of the trouble, and Mrs. March could not resign +herself to it till her husband suggested that she should consider it +providential. This touched the lingering superstition in which she had +been ancestrally taught to regard herself as a means, when in a very +tight place, and to leave the responsibility with the moral government of +the universe. As she now perceived, it had been the same as ordered that +they should see Burnamy under such conditions in the afternoon that they +could not speak to him, and hear where he was staying; and in an inferior +degree it had been the same as ordered that March should see him in the +evening and tell him everything, so that she should know just how to act +when she saw him in the morning. If he could plausibly account for the +renewal of his flirtation with Miss Elkins, or if he seemed generally +worthy apart from that, she could forgive him. + +It was so pleasant when he came in at breakfast with his well-remembered +smile, that she did not require from him any explicit defence. While +they talked she was righting herself in an undercurrent of drama with +Miss Triscoe, and explaining to her that they could not possibly wait +over for her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for +Berlin, as they had made all their plans. It was not easy, even in drama +where one has everything one's own way, to prove that she could not +without impiety so far interfere with the course of Providence as to +prevent Miss Triscoe's coming with her father to the same hotel where +Burnamy was staying. She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had +not known he was staying there when she telegraphed them where to come, +and that in the absence of any open confidence from Miss Triscoe she was +not obliged to suppose that his presence would be embarrassing. + +March proposed leaving her with Burnamy while he went up into the town +and interviewed the house of Schiller, which he had not done yet; and as +soon as he got himself away she came to business, breaking altogether +from the inner drama with Miss Triscoe and devoting herself to Burnamy. +They had already got so far as to have mentioned the meeting with the +Triscoes in Wurzburg, and she said: "Did Mr. March tell you they were +coming here? Or, no! We hadn't heard then. Yes, they are coming to- +morrow. They may be going to stay some time. She talked of Weimar when +we first spoke of Germany on the ship." Burnamy said nothing, and she +suddenly added, with a sharp glance, "They wanted us to get them rooms, +and we advised their coming to this house." He started very +satisfactorily, and "Do you think they would be comfortable, here?" she +pursued. + +"Oh, yes, very. They can have my room; it's southeast; I shall be going +into other quarters." She did not say anything; and "Mrs. March," he +began again, "what is the use of my beating about the bush? You must +know what I went back to Carlsbad for, that night--" + +"No one ever told--" + +"Well, you must have made a pretty good guess. But it was a failure. I +ought to have failed, and I did. She said that unless her father liked +it--And apparently he hasn't liked it." Burnamy smiled ruefully. + +"How do you know? She didn't know where you were!" + +"She could have got word to me if she had had good news for me. They've +forwarded other letters from Pupp's. But it's all right; I had no +business to go back to Carlsbad. Of course you didn't know I was in this +house when you told them to come; and I must clear out. I had better +clear out of Weimar, too." + +"No, I don't think so; I have no right to pry into your affairs, but--" + +"Oh, they're wide enough open!" + +"And you may have changed your mind. I thought you might, when I saw you +yesterday at Belvedere--" + +"I was only trying to make bad worse." + +"Then I think the situation has changed entirely through what Mr. Stoller +said to Mr. March." + +"I can't see how it has. I committed an act of shabby treachery, and I'm +as much to blame as if he still wanted to punish me for it." + +"Did Mr. March say that to you?" + +"No; I said that to Mr. March; and he couldn't answer it, and you can't. +You're very good, and very kind, but you can't answer it." + +"I can answer it very well," she boasted, but she could find nothing +better to say than, "It's your duty to her to see her and let her know." + +"Doesn't she know already?" + +"She has a right to know it from you. I think you are morbid, Mr. +Burnamy. You know very well I didn't like your doing that to Mr. +Stoller. I didn't say so at the time, because you seemed to feel it +enough yourself. But I did like your owning up to it," and here Mrs. +March thought it time to trot out her borrowed battle-horse again. "My +husband always says that if a person owns up to an error, fully and +faithfully, as you've always done, they make it the same in its +consequences to them as if it had never been done." + +"Does Mr. March say that?" asked Burnamy with a relenting smile. + +"Indeed he does!" + +Burnamy hesitated; then he asked, gloomily again: + +"And what about the consequences to the, other fellow?" + +"A woman," said Mrs. March, "has no concern with them. And besides, I +think you've done all you could to save Mr. Stoller from the +consequences." + +"I haven't done anything." + +"No matter. You would if you could. I wonder," she broke off, to +prevent his persistence at a point where her nerves were beginning to +give way, "what can be keeping Mr. March?" + +Nothing much more important, it appeared later, than the pleasure of +sauntering through the streets on the way to the house of Schiller, and +looking at the pretty children going to school, with books under their +arms. It was the day for the schools to open after the long summer +vacation, and there was a freshness of expectation in the shining faces +which, if it could not light up his own graybeard visage, could at least +touch his heart: + +When he reached the Schiller house he found that it was really not the +Schiller house, but the Schiller flat, of three or four rooms, one flight +up, whose windows look out upon the street named after the poet. The +whole place is bare and clean; in one corner of the large room fronting +the street stands Schiller's writing-table, with his chair before it; +with the foot extending toward this there stands, in another corner, the +narrow bed on which he died; some withered wreaths on the pillow frame a +picture of his deathmask, which at first glance is like his dead face +lying there. It is all rather tasteless, and all rather touching, and +the place with its meagre appointments, as compared with the rich Goethe +house, suggests that personal competition with Goethe in which Schiller +is always falling into the second place. Whether it will be finally so +with him in literature it is too early to ask of time, and upon other +points eternity will not be interrogated. "The great, Goethe and the +good Schiller," they remain; and yet, March reasoned, there was something +good in Goethe and something great, in Schiller. + +He was so full of the pathos of their inequality before the world that he +did not heed the warning on the door of the pastry-shop near the Schiller +house, and on opening it he bedaubed his hand with the fresh paint on it. +He was then in such a state, that he could not bring his mind to bear +upon the question of which cakes his wife would probably prefer, and he +stood helplessly holding up his hand till the good woman behind the +counter discovered his plight, and uttered a loud cry of compassion. +She ran and got a wet napkin, which she rubbed with soap, and then she +instructed him by word and gesture to rub his hand upon it, and she did +not leave him till his rescue was complete. He let her choose a variety +of the cakes for him, and came away with a gay paper bag full of them, +and with the feeling that he had been in more intimate relations with the +life of Weimar than travellers are often privileged to be. He argued +from the instant and intelligent sympathy of the pastry woman a high +grade of culture in all classes; and he conceived the notion of +pretending to Mrs. March that he had got these cakes from, a descendant +of Schiller. + +His deceit availed with her for the brief moment in which she always, +after so many years' experience of his duplicity, believed anything he +told her. They dined merrily together at their hotel, and then Burnamy +came down to the station with them and was very comfortable to March in +helping him to get their tickets and their baggage registered. The train +which was to take them to Halle, where they were to change for Berlin, +was rather late, and they had but ten minutes after it came in before it +would start again. Mrs. March was watching impatiently at the window of +the waiting-room for the dismounting passengers to clear the platform and +allow the doors to be opened; suddenly she gave a cry, and turned and ran +into the passage by which the new arrivals were pouring out toward the +superabundant omnibuses. March and Burnamy, who had been talking apart, +mechanically rushed after her and found her kissing Miss Triscoe and +shaking hands with the general amidst a tempest of questions and answers, +from which it appeared that the Triscoes had got tired of staying in +Wurzburg, and had simply come on to Weimar a day sooner than they had +intended. + +The, general was rather much bundled up for a day which was mild for a +German summer day, and he coughed out an explanation that he had taken an +abominable cold at that ridiculous parade, and had not shaken it off yet. +He had a notion that change of air would be better for him; it could not +be worse. + +He seemed a little vague as to Burnamy, rather than inimical. While the +ladies were still talking eagerly together in proffer and acceptance of +Mrs. March's lamentations that she should be going away just as Miss +Triscoe was coming, he asked if the omnibus for their hotel was there. +He by no means resented Burnamy's assurance that it was, and he did not +refuse to let him order their baggage, little and large, loaded upon it. +By the time this was done, Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had so far +detached themselves from each other that they could separate after one +more formal expression of regret and forgiveness. With a lament into +which she poured a world of inarticulate emotions, Mrs. March wrenched +herself from the place, and suffered herself, to be pushed toward her +train. But with the last long look which she cast over her shoulder, +before she vanished into the waiting-room, she saw Miss Triscoe and +Burnamy transacting the elaborate politenesses of amiable strangers with +regard to the very small bag which the girl had in her hand. He +succeeded in relieving her of it; and then he led the way out of the +station on the left of the general, while Miss Triscoe brought up the +rear. + + + + +LXIII. + +From the window of the train as it drew out Mrs. March tried for a +glimpse of the omnibus in which her proteges were now rolling away +together. As they were quite out of sight in the omnibus, which was +itself out of sight, she failed, but as she fell back against her seat +she treated the recent incident with a complexity and simultaneity of +which no report can give an idea. At the end one fatal conviction +remained: that in everything she had said she had failed to explain to +Miss Triscoe how Burnamy happened to be in Weimar and how he happened to +be there with them in the station. She required March to say how she had +overlooked the very things which she ought to have mentioned first, and +which she had on the point of her tongue the whole time. She went over +the entire ground again to see if she could discover the reason why she +had made such an unaccountable break, and it appeared that she was led to +it by his rushing after her with Burnamy before she had had a chance to +say a word about him; of course she could not say anything in his +presence. This gave her some comfort, and there was consolation in the +fact that she had left them together without the least intention or +connivance, and now, no matter what happened, she could not accuse +herself, and he could not accuse her of match-making. + +He said that his own sense of guilt was so great that he should not dream +of accusing her of anything except of regret that now she could never +claim the credit of bringing the lovers together under circumstances so +favorable. As soon as they were engaged they could join in renouncing +her with a good conscience, and they would probably make this the basis +of their efforts to propitiate the general. + +She said she did not care, and with the mere removal of the lovers in +space, her interest in them began to abate. They began to be of a minor +importance in the anxieties of the change of trains at Halle, and in the +excitement of settling into the express from Frankfort there were moments +when they were altogether forgotten. The car was of almost American +length, and it ran with almost American smoothness; when the conductor +came and collected an extra fare for their seats, the Marches felt that +if the charge had been two dollars instead of two marks they would have +had every advantage of American travel. + +On the way to Berlin the country was now fertile and flat, and now +sterile and flat; near the capital the level sandy waste spread almost to +its gates. The train ran quickly through the narrow fringe of suburbs, +and then they were in one of those vast Continental stations which put +our outdated depots to shame. The good 'traeger' who took possession of +them and their hand-bags, put their boxes on a baggage-bearing drosky, +and then got them another drosky for their personal transportation. This +was a drosky of the first-class, but they would not have thought it so, +either from the vehicle itself, or from the appearance of the driver and +his horses. The public carriages of Germany are the shabbiest in the +world; at Berlin the horses look like old hair trunks and the drivers +like their moth-eaten contents. + +The Marches got no splendor for the two prices they paid, and their +approach to their hotel on Unter den Linden was as unimpressive as the +ignoble avenue itself. It was a moist, cold evening, and the mean, +tiresome street, slopped and splashed under its two rows of small trees, +to which the thinning leaves clung like wet rags, between long lines of +shops and hotels which had neither the grace of Paris nor the grandiosity +of New York. March quoted in bitter derision: + + "Bees, bees, was it your hydromel, + Under the Lindens?" + +and his wife said that if Commonwealth Avenue in Boston could be imagined +with its trees and without their beauty, flanked by the architecture of +Sixth Avenue, with dashes of the west side of Union Square, that would be +the famous Unter den Linden, where she had so resolutely decided that +they would stay while in Berlin. + +They had agreed upon the hotel, and neither could blame the other because +it proved second-rate in everything but its charges. They ate a poorish +table d'hote dinner in such low spirits that March had no heart to get a +rise from his wife by calling her notice to the mouse which fed upon the +crumbs about their feet while they dined. Their English-speaking waiter +said that it was a very warm evening, and they never knew whether this +was because he was a humorist, or because he was lonely and wished to +talk, or because it really was a warm evening, for Berlin. When they had +finished, they went out and drove about the greater part of the evening +looking for another hotel, whose first requisite should be that it was +not on Unter den Linden. What mainly determined Mrs. March in favor of +the large, handsome, impersonal place they fixed upon was the fact that +it was equipped for steam-heating; what determined March was the fact +that it had a passenger-office where when he wished to leave, he could +buy his railroad tickets and have his baggage checked without the +maddening anxiety, of doing it at the station. But it was precisely in +these points that the hotel which admirably fulfilled its other functions +fell short. The weather made a succession of efforts throughout their +stay to clear up cold; it merely grew colder without clearing up, but +this seemed to offer no suggestion of steam for heating their bleak +apartment and the chilly corridors to the management. With the help of a +large lamp which they kept burning night and day they got the temperature +of their rooms up to sixty; there was neither stove nor fireplace, the +cold electric bulbs diffused a frosty glare; and in the vast, stately +dining-room with its vaulted roof, there was nothing to warm them but +their plates, and the handles of their knives and forks, which, by a +mysterious inspiration, were always hot. When they were ready to go, +March experienced from the apathy of the baggage clerk and the reluctance +of the porters a more piercing distress than any he had known at the +railroad stations; and one luckless valise which he ordered sent after +him by express reached his bankers in Paris a fortnight overdue, with an +accumulation of charges upon it outvaluing the books which it contained. + +But these were minor defects in an establishment which had many merits, +and was mainly of the temperament and intention of the large English +railroad hotels. They looked from their windows down into a gardened +square, peopled with a full share of the superabounding statues of Berlin +and frequented by babies and nurse maids who seemed not to mind the cold +any more than the stone kings and generals. The aspect of this square, +like the excellent cooking of the hotel and the architecture of the +imperial capital, suggested the superior civilization of Paris. Even the +rows of gray houses and private palaces of Berlin are in the French +taste, which is the only taste there is in Berlin. The suggestion of +Paris is constant, but it is of Paris in exile, and without the chic +which the city wears in its native air. The crowd lacks this as much as +the architecture and the sculpture; there is no distinction among the men +except for now and then a military figure, and among the women no style +such as relieves the commonplace rash of the New York streets. The +Berliners are plain and ill dressed, both men and women, and even the +little children are plain. Every one is ill dressed, but no one is +ragged, and among the undersized homely folk of the lower classes there +is no such poverty-stricken shabbiness as shocks and insults the sight in +New York. That which distinctly recalls our metropolis is the lofty +passage of the elevated trains intersecting the prospectives of many +streets; but in Berlin the elevated road is carried on massive brick +archways and not lifted upon gay, crazy iron ladders like ours. + +When you look away from this, and regard Berlin on its aesthetic, side +you are again in that banished Paris, whose captive art-soul is made to +serve, so far as it may be enslaved to such an effect, in the celebration +of the German triumph over France. Berlin has never the presence of a +great capital, however, in spite of its perpetual monumental insistence. +There is no streaming movement in broad vistas; the dull looking +population moves sluggishly; there is no show of fine equipages. The +prevailing tone of the city and the sky is gray; but under the cloudy +heaven there is no responsive Gothic solemnity in the architecture. +There are hints of the older German cities in some of the remote and +observe streets, but otherwise all is as new as Boston, which in fact the +actual Berlin hardly antedates. + +There are easily more statues in Berlin than in any other city in the +world, but they only unite in failing to give Berlin an artistic air. +They stand in long rows on the cornices; they crowd the pediments; they +poise on one leg above domes and arches; they shelter themselves in +niches; they ride about on horseback; they sit or lounge on street +corners or in garden walks; all with a mediocrity in the older sort which +fails of any impression. If they were only furiously baroque they would +be something, and it may be from a sense of this that there is a self- +assertion in the recent sculptures, which are always patriotic, more +noisy and bragging than anything else in perennial brass. This offensive +art is the modern Prussian avatar of the old German romantic spirit, and +bears the same relation to it that modern romanticism in literature bears +to romance. It finds its apotheosis in the monument to Kaiser Wilhelm +I., a vast incoherent group of swelling and swaggering bronze, +commemorating the victory of the first Prussian Emperor in the war with +the last French Emperor, and avenging the vanquished upon the victors by +its ugliness. The ungainly and irrelevant assemblage of men and animals +backs away from the imperial palace, and saves itself too soon from +plunging over the border of a canal behind it, not far from Rauch's great +statue of the great Frederic. To come to it from the simplicity and +quiet of that noble work is like passing from some exquisite masterpiece +of naturalistic acting to the rant and uproar of melodrama; and the +Marches stood stunned and bewildered by its wild explosions. + +When they could escape they found themselves so convenient to the +imperial palace that they judged best to discharge at once the obligation +to visit it which must otherwise weigh upon them. They entered the court +without opposition from the sentinel, and joined other strangers +straggling instinctively toward a waiting-room in one corner of the +building, where after they had increased to some thirty, a custodian took +charge of them, and led them up a series of inclined plains of brick to +the state apartments. In the antechamber they found a provision of +immense felt over-shoes which they were expected to put on for their +passage over the waxed marquetry of the halls. These roomy slippers were +designed for the accommodation of the native boots; and upon the mixed +company of foreigners the effect was in the last degree humiliating. The +women's skirts some what hid their disgrace, but the men were openly put +to shame, and they shuffled forward with their bodies at a convenient +incline like a company of snow-shoers. In the depths of his own +abasement March heard a female voice behind him sighing in American +accents, "To think I should be polishing up these imperial floors with my +republican feet!" + +The protest expressed the rebellion which he felt mounting in his own +heart as they advanced through the heavily splendid rooms, in the +historical order of the family portraits recording the rise of the +Prussian sovereigns from Margraves to Emperors. He began to realize here +the fact which grew open him more and more that imperial Germany is not +the effect of a popular impulse but of a dynastic propensity. There is +nothing original in the imperial palace, nothing national; it embodies +and proclaims a powerful personal will, and in its adaptations of French +art it appeals to no emotion in the German witness nobler than his pride +in the German triumph over the French in war. March found it tiresome +beyond the tiresome wont of palaces, and he gladly shook off the sense of +it with his felt shoes. "Well," he confided to his wife when they were +fairly out-of-doors, "if Prussia rose in the strength of silence, as +Carlyle wants us to believe, she is taking it out in talk now, and tall +talk." + +"Yes, isn't she!" Mrs. March assented, and with a passionate desire for +excess in a bad thing, which we all know at times, she looked eagerly +about her for proofs of that odious militarism of the empire, which ought +to have been conspicuous in the imperial capital; but possibly because +the troops were nearly all away at the manoeuvres, there were hardly more +in the streets than she had sometimes seen in Washington. Again the +German officers signally failed to offer her any rudeness when she met +them on the side-walks. There were scarcely any of them, and perhaps +that might have been the reason why they were not more aggressive; but a +whole company of soldiers marching carelessly up to the palace from the +Brandenburg gate, without music, or so much style as our own militia +often puts on, regarded her with inoffensive eyes so far as they looked +at her. She declared that personally there was nothing against the +Prussians; even when in uniform they were kindly and modest-looking men; +it was when they got up on pedestals, in bronze or marble, that they, +began to bully and to brag. + + + + +LXIV. + +The dinner which the Marches got at a restaurant on Unter den Linden +almost redeemed the avenue from the disgrace it had fallen into with +them. It was, the best meal they had yet eaten in Europe, and as to fact +and form was a sort of compromise between a French dinner and an English +dinner which they did not hesitate to pronounce Prussian. The waiter who +served it was a friendly spirit, very sensible of their intelligent +appreciation of the dinner; and from him they formed a more respectful +opinion of Berlin civilization than they had yet held. After the manner +of strangers everywhere they judged the country they were visiting from +such of its inhabitants as chance brought them in contact with; and it +would really be a good thing for nations that wish to stand well with the +world at large to look carefully to the behavior of its cabmen and car +conductors, its hotel clerks and waiters, its theatre-ticket sellers and +ushers, its policemen and sacristans, its landlords and salesmen; for by +these rather than by its society women and its statesmen and divines, is +it really judged in the books of travellers; some attention also should +be paid to the weather, if the climate is to be praised. In the railroad +cafe at Potsdam there was a waiter so rude to the Marches that if they +had not been people of great strength of character he would have undone +the favorable impression the soldiers and civilians of Berlin generally +had been at such pains to produce in them; and throughout the week of +early September which they passed there, it rained so much and so +bitterly, it was so wet and so cold, that they might have come away +thinking it's the worst climate in the world, if it had not been for a +man whom they saw in one of the public gardens pouring a heavy stream +from his garden hose upon the shrubbery already soaked and shuddering in +the cold. But this convinced them that they were suffering from weather +and not from the climate, which must really be hot and dry; and they went +home to their hotel and sat contentedly down in a temperature of sixty +degrees. The weather, was not always so bad; one day it was dry cold +instead of wet cold, with rough, rusty clouds breaking a blue sky; +another day, up to eleven in the forenoon, it was like Indian summer; +then it changed to a harsh November air; and then it relented and ended +so mildly, that they hired chairs in the place before the imperial palace +for five pfennigs each, and sat watching the life before them. Motherly +women-folk were there knitting; two American girls in chairs near them +chatted together; some fine equipages, the only ones they saw in Berlin, +went by; a dog and a man (the wife who ought to have been in harness was +probably sick, and the poor fellow was forced to take her place)passed +dragging a cart; some schoolboys who had hung their satchels upon the low +railing were playing about the base of the statue of King William III. +in the joyous freedom of German childhood. + +They seemed the gayer for the brief moments of sunshine, but to the +Americans, who were Southern by virtue of their sky, the brightness had a +sense of lurking winter in it, such as they remembered feeling on a sunny +day in Quebec. The blue heaven looked sad; but they agreed that it fitly +roofed the bit of old feudal Berlin which forms the most ancient wing of +the Schloss. This was time-blackened and rude, but at least it did not +try to be French, and it overhung the Spree which winds through the city +and gives it the greatest charm it has. In fact Berlin, which is +otherwise so grandiose without grandeur and so severe without +impressiveness, is sympathetic wherever the Spree opens it to the sky. +The stream is spanned by many bridges, and bridges cannot well be +unpicturesque, especially if they have statues to help them out. The +Spree abounds in bridges, and it has a charming habit of slow hay-laden +barges; at the landings of the little passenger-steamers which ply upon +it there are cafes and summer-gardens, and these even in the inclement +air of September suggested a friendly gayety. + +The Marches saw it best in the tour of the elevated road in Berlin which +they made in an impassioned memory of the elevated road in New York. The +brick viaducts which carry this arch the Spree again and again in their +course through and around the city, but with never quite such spectacular +effects as our spidery tressels, achieve. The stations are pleasant, +sometimes with lunch-counters and news-stands, but have not the comic- +opera-chalet prettiness of ours, and are not so frequent. The road is +not so smooth, the cars not so smooth-running or so swift. On the other +hand they are comfortably cushioned, and they are never overcrowded. The +line is at times above, at times below the houses, and at times on a +level with them, alike in city and in suburbs. The train whirled out of +thickly built districts, past the backs of the old houses, into outskirts +thinly populated, with new houses springing up without order or +continuity among the meadows and vegetable-gardens, and along the ready- +made, elm-planted avenues, where wooden fences divided the vacant lots. +Everywhere the city was growing out over the country, in blocks and +detached edifices of limestone, sandstone, red and yellow brick, larger +or smaller, of no more uniformity than our suburban dwellings, but never +of their ugliness or lawless offensiveness. + +In an effort for the intimate life of the country March went two +successive mornings for his breakfast to the Cafe Bauer, which has some +admirable wall-printings, and is the chief cafe on Unter den Linden; but +on both days there were more people in the paintings than out of them. +The second morning the waiter who took his order recognized him and +asked, "Wie gestern?" and from this he argued an affectionate constancy +in the Berliners, and a hospitable observance of the tastes of strangers. +At his bankers, on the other hand, the cashier scrutinized his signature +and remarked that it did not look like the signature in his letter of +credit, and then he inferred a suspicious mind in the moneyed classes of +Prussia; as he had not been treated with such unkind doubt by Hebrew +bankers anywhere, he made a mental note that the Jews were politer than +the Christians in Germany. In starting for Potsdam he asked a traeger +where the Potsdam train was and the man said, "Dat train dare," and in +coming back he helped a fat old lady out of the car, and she thanked him +in English. From these incidents, both occurring the same day in the +same place, the inference of a widespread knowledge of our language in +all classes of the population was inevitable. + +In this obvious and easy manner he studied contemporary civilization in +the capital. He even carried his researches farther, and went one rainy +afternoon to an exhibition of modern pictures in a pavilion of the +Thiergarten, where from the small attendance he inferred an indifference +to the arts which he would not ascribe to the weather. One evening at a +summer theatre where they gave the pantomime of the 'Puppenfee' and the +operetta of 'Hansel and Gretel', he observed that the greater part of the +audience was composed of nice plain young girls and children, and he +noted that there was no sort of evening dress; from the large number of +Americans present he imagined a numerous colony in Berlin, where they +mast have an instinctive sense of their co-nationality, since one of them +in the stress of getting his hat and overcoat when they all came out, +confidently addressed him in English. But he took stock of his +impressions with his wife, and they seemed to him so few, after all, that +he could not resist a painful sense of isolation in the midst of the +environment. + +They made a Sunday excursion to the Zoological Gardens in the +Thiergarten, with a large crowd of the lower classes, but though they had +a great deal of trouble in getting there by the various kinds of +horsecars and electric cars, they did not feel that they had got near to +the popular life. They endeavored for some sense of Berlin society by +driving home in a drosky, and on the way they passed rows of beautiful +houses, in French and Italian taste, fronting the deep, damp green park +from the Thiergartenstrasse, in which they were confident cultivated and +delightful people lived; but they remained to the last with nothing but +their unsupported conjecture. + + + + +LXV. + +Their excursion to Potsdam was the cream of their sojourn in Berlin. +They chose for it the first fair morning, and they ran out over the flat +sandy plains surrounding the capital, and among the low hills surrounding +Potsdam before it actually began to rain. + +They wished immediately to see Sans Souci for the great Frederick's sake, +and they drove through a lively shower to the palace, where they waited +with a horde of twenty-five other tourists in a gusty colonnade before +they were led through Voltaire's room and Frederick's death chamber. + +The French philosopher comes before the Prussian prince at Sans Souci +even in the palatial villa which expresses the wilful caprice of the +great Frederick as few edifices have embodied the whims or tastes of +their owners. The whole affair is eighteenth-century French, as the +Germans conceived it. The gardened terrace from which the low, one-story +building, thickly crusted with baroque sculptures, looks down into a +many-colored parterre, was luxuriantly French, and sentimentally French +the colonnaded front opening to a perspective of artificial ruins, with +broken pillars lifting a conscious fragment of architrave against the +sky. Within, all again was French in the design, the decoration and the +furnishing. At that time there, was in fact no other taste, and +Frederick, who despised and disused his native tongue, was resolved upon +French taste even in his intimate companionship. The droll story of his +coquetry with the terrible free spirit which he got from France to be his +guest is vividly reanimated at Sans Souci, where one breathes the very +air in which the strangely assorted companions lived, and in which they +parted so soon to pursue each other with brutal annoyance on one side, +and with merciless mockery on the other. Voltaire was long ago revenged +upon his host for all the indignities he suffered from him in their +comedy; he left deeply graven upon Frederick's fame the trace of those +lacerating talons which he could strike to the quick; and it is the +singular effect of this scene of their brief friendship that one feels +there the pre-eminence of the wit in whatever was most important to +mankind. + +The rain had lifted a little and the sun shone out on the bloom of the +lovely parterre where the Marches profited by a smiling moment to wander +among the statues and the roses heavy with the shower. Then they walked +back to their carriage and drove to the New Palace, which expresses in +differing architectural terms the same subjection to an alien ideal of +beauty. It is thronged without by delightfully preposterous rococco +statues, and within it is rich in all those curiosities and memorials of +royalty with which palaces so well know how to fatigue the flesh and +spirit of their visitors. + +The Marches escaped from it all with sighs and groans of relief, and +before they drove off to see the great fountain of the Orangeries, they +dedicated a moment of pathos to the Temple of Friendship which Frederick +built in memory of unhappy Wilhelmina of Beyreuth, the sister he loved in +the common sorrow of their wretched home, and neglected when he came to +his kingdom. It is beautiful in its rococco way, swept up to on its +terrace by most noble staircases, and swaggered over by baroque +allegories of all sorts: Everywhere the statues outnumbered the visitors, +who may have been kept away by the rain; the statues naturally did not +mind it. + +Sometime in the midst of their sight-seeing the Marches had dinner in a +mildewed restaurant, where a compatriotic accent caught their ear in a +voice saying to the waiter, "We are in a hurry." They looked round and +saw that it proceeded from the pretty nose of a young American girl, who +sat with a party of young American girls at a neighboring table. Then +they perceived that all the people in that restaurant were Americans, +mostly young girls, who all looked as if they were in a hurry. But +neither their beauty nor their impatience had the least effect with the +waiter, who prolonged the dinner at his pleasure, and alarmed the Marches +with the misgiving that they should not have time for the final palace on +their list. + +This was the palace where the father of Frederick, the mad old Frederick +William, brought up his children with that severity which Solomon urged +but probably did not practise. It is a vast place, but they had time for +it all, though the custodian made the most of them as the latest comers +of the day, and led them through it with a prolixity as great as their +waiter's. He was a most friendly custodian, and when he found that they +had some little notion of what they wanted to see, he mixed zeal with his +patronage, and in a manner made them his honored guests. They saw +everything but the doorway where the faithful royal father used to lie in +wait for his children and beat them, princes and princesses alike, with +his knobby cane as they came through. They might have seen this doorway +without knowing it; but from the window overlooking the parade-ground +where his family watched the manoeuvres of his gigantic grenadiers, they +made sure of just such puddles as Frederick William forced his family to +sit with their feet in, while they dined alfresco on pork and cabbage; +and they visited the room of the Smoking Parliament where he ruled his +convives with a rod of iron, and made them the victims of his bad jokes. +The measuring-board against which he took the stature of his tall +grenadiers is there, and one room is devoted to those masterpieces which +he used to paint in the agonies of gout. His chef d'oeuvre contains a +figure with two left feet, and there seemed no reason why it might not. +have had three. In another room is a small statue of Carlyle, who did so +much to rehabilitate the house which the daughter of it, Wilhelmina, did +so much to demolish in the regard of men. + +The palace is now mostly kept for guests, and there is a chamber where +Napoleon slept, which is not likely to be occupied soon by any other +self-invited guest of his nation. It is perhaps to keep the princes of +Europe humble that hardly a palace on the Continent is without the +chamber of this adventurer, who, till he stooped to be like them, was +easily their master. Another democracy had here recorded its invasion in +the American stoves which the custodian pointed out in the corridor when +Mrs, March, with as little delay as possible, had proclaimed their +country. The custodian professed an added respect for them from the +fact, and if he did not feel it, no doubt he merited the drink money +which they lavished on him at parting. + +Their driver also was a congenial spirit, and when he let them out of his +carriage at the station, he excused the rainy day to them. He was a +merry fellow beyond the wont of his nation, and he-laughed at the bad +weather, as if it had been a good joke on them. + +His gayety, and the red sunset light, which shone on the stems of the +pines on the way back to Berlin, contributed to the content in which they +reviewed their visit to Potsdam. They agreed that the place was +perfectly charming, and that it was incomparably expressive of kingly +will and pride. These had done there on the grand scale what all the +German princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and emulation +of French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a historical growth +as at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, in which there was +often the curious fascination of insanity. + +They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the +Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, where all the portraits, effigies, +personal belongings and memorials of that gifted, eccentric race are +gathered and historically disposed. The princes of the mighty line who +stand out from the rest are Frederick the Great and his infuriate. +father; and in the waxen likeness of the son, a small thin figure, +terribly spry, and a face pitilessly alert, appears something of the +madness which showed in the life of the sire. + +They went through many rooms in which the memorials of the kings and +queens, the emperors and empresses were carefully ordered, and felt no +kindness except before the relics relating to the Emperor Frederick and +his mother. In the presence of the greatest of the dynasty they +experienced a kind of terror which March expressed, when they were safely +away, in the confession of his joy that those people were dead. + + + + + +LXVI. + +The rough weather which made Berlin almost uninhabitable to Mrs. March +had such an effect with General Triscoe at Weimar that under the orders +of an English-speaking doctor he retreated from it altogether and went to +bed. Here he escaped the bronchitis which had attacked him, and his +convalesence left him so little to complain of that he could not always +keep his temper. In the absence of actual offence, either from his +daughter or from Burnamy, his sense of injury took a retroactive form; it +centred first in Stoller and the twins; then it diverged toward Rose +Adding, his mother and Kenby, and finally involved the Marches in the +same measure of inculpation; for they had each and all had part, directly +or indirectly, in the chances that brought on his cold. + +He owed to Burnamy the comfort of the best room in the hotel, and he was +constantly dependent upon his kindness; but he made it evident that he +did not over-value Burnamy's sacrifice and devotion, and that it was not +an unmixed pleasure, however great a convenience, to have him about. In +giving up his room, Burnamy had proposed going out of the hotel +altogether; but General Triscoe heard of this with almost as great +vexation as he had accepted the room. He besought him not to go, but so +ungraciously that his daughter was ashamed, and tried to atone for his +manner by the kindness of her own. + +Perhaps General Triscoe would not have been without excuse if he were not +eager to have her share with destitute merit the fortune which she had +hitherto shared only with him. He was old, and certain luxuries had +become habits if not necessaries with him. Of course he did not say this +to himself; and still less did he say it to her. But he let her see that +he did not enjoy the chance which had thrown them again in such close +relations with Burnamy, and he did pot hide his belief that the Marches +were somehow to blame for it. This made it impossible for her to write +at once to Mrs. March as she had promised; but she was determined that it +should not make her unjust to Burnamy. She would not avoid him; she +would not let anything that had happened keep her from showing that she +felt his kindness and was glad of his help. + +Of course they knew no one else in Weimar, and his presence merely as a +fellow-countryman would have been precious. He got them a doctor, +against General Triscoe's will; he went for his medicines; he lent him +books and papers; he sat with him and tried to amuse him. But with the +girl he attempted no return to the situation at Carlsbad; there is +nothing like the delicate pride of a young man who resolves to forego +unfair advantage in love. + +The day after their arrival, when her father was making up for the sleep +he had lost by night, she found herself alone in the little reading-room +of the hotel with Burnamy for the first time, and she said: "I suppose +you must have been all over Weimar by this time." + +"Well, I've been here, off and on, almost a month. It's an interesting +place. There's a good deal of the old literary quality left." + +"And you enjoy that! I saw"--she added this with a little unnecessary +flush--"your poem in the paper you lent papa." + +"I suppose I ought to have kept that back. But I couldn't." He laughed, +and she said: + +"You must find a great deal of inspiration in such a literary place." + +"It isn't lying about loose, exactly." Even in the serious and +perplexing situation in which he found himself he could not help being +amused with her unliterary notions of literature, her conventional and +commonplace conceptions of it. They had their value with him as those of +a more fashionable world than his own, which he believed was somehow a +greater world. At the same time he believed that she was now interposing +them between the present and the past, and forbidding with them any +return to the mood of their last meeting in Carlsbad. He looked at her +ladylike composure and unconsciousness, and wondered if she could be the +same person and the same person as they who lost themselves in the crowd +that night and heard and said words palpitant with fate. Perhaps there +had been no such words; perhaps it was all a hallucination. He must +leave her to recognize that it was reality; till she did so, he felt +bitterly that there was nothing for him but submission and patience; if +she never did so, there was nothing for him but acquiescence. + +In this talk and in the talks they had afterwards she seemed willing +enough to speak of what had happened since: of coming on to Wurzburg with +the Addings and of finding the Marches there; of Rose's collapse, and of +his mother's flight seaward with him in the care of Kenby, who was so +fortunately going to Holland, too. He on his side told her of going to +Wurzburg for the manoeuvres, and they agreed that it was very strange +they had not met. + +She did not try to keep their relations from taking the domestic +character which was inevitable, and it seemed to him that this in itself +was significant of a determination on her part that was fatal to his +hopes. With a lover's indefinite power of blinding himself to what is +before his eyes, he believed that if she had been more diffident of him, +more uneasy in his presence, he should have had more courage; but for her +to breakfast unafraid with him, to meet him at lunch and dinner in the +little dining-room where they were often the only guests, and always the +only English-speaking guests, was nothing less than prohibitive. + +In the hotel service there was one of those men who are porters in this +world, but will be angels in the next, unless the perfect goodness of +their looks, the constant kindness of their acts, belies them. The +Marches had known and loved the man in their brief stay, and he had been +the fast friend of Burnamy from the moment they first saw each other at +the station. He had tenderly taken possession of General Triscoe on his +arrival, and had constituted himself the nurse and keeper of the +irascible invalid, in the intervals of going to the trains, with a zeal +that often relieved his daughter and Burnamy. The general in fact +preferred him to either, and a tacit custom grew up by which when August +knocked at his door, and offered himself in his few words of serviceable +English, that one of them who happened to be sitting with the general +gave way, and left him in charge. The retiring watcher was then apt to +encounter the other watcher on the stairs, or in the reading-room, or in +the tiny, white-pebbled door-yard at a little table in the shade of the +wooden-tubbed evergreens. From the habit of doing this they one day +suddenly formed the habit of going across the street to that gardened +hollow before and below the Grand-Ducal Museum. There was here a bench +in the shelter of some late-flowering bush which the few other +frequenters of the place soon recognized as belonging to the young +strangers, so that they would silently rise and leave it to them when +they saw them coming. Apparently they yielded not only to their right, +but to a certain authority which resides in lovers, and which all other +men, and especially all other women, like to acknowledge and respect. + +In the absence of any civic documents bearing upon the affair it is +difficult to establish the fact that this was the character in which +Agatha and Burnamy were commonly regarded by the inhabitants of Weimar. +But whatever their own notion of their relation was, if it was not that +of a Brant and a Brautigam, the people of Weimar would have been puzzled +to say what it was. It was known that the gracious young lady's father, +who would naturally have accompanied them, was sick, and in the fact that +they were Americans much extenuation was found for whatever was +phenomenal in their unencumbered enjoyment of each other's society. + +If their free American association was indistinguishably like the peasant +informality which General Triscoe despised in the relations of Kenby and +Mrs. Adding, it is to be said in his excuse that he could not be fully +cognizant of it, in the circumstances, and so could do nothing to prevent +it. His pessimism extended to his health; from the first he believed +himself worse than the doctor thought him, and he would have had some +other physician if he had not found consolation in their difference of +opinion and the consequent contempt which he was enabled to cherish for +the doctor in view of the man's complete ignorance of the case. In proof +of his own better understanding of it, he remained in bed some time after +the doctor said he might get up. + +Nearly ten days had passed before he left his room, and it was not till +then that he clearly saw how far affairs had gone with his daughter and +Burnamy, though even then his observance seemed to have anticipated +theirs. He found them in a quiet acceptance of the fortune which had +brought them together, so contented that they appeared to ask nothing +more of it. The divine patience and confidence of their youth might +sometimes have had almost the effect of indifference to a witness who had +seen its evolution from the moods of the first few days of their reunion +in Weimar. To General Triscoe, however, it looked like an understanding +which had been made without reference to his wishes, and had not been +directly brought to his knowledge. + +"Agatha," he said, after due note of a gay contest between her and +Burnamy over the pleasure and privilege of ordering his supper sent to +his room when he had gone back to it from his first afternoon in the open +air, "how long is that young man going to stay in Weimar?" + +"Why, I don't know!" she answered, startled from her work of beating the +sofa pillows into shape, and pausing with one of them in her hand. +"I never asked him." She looked down candidly into his face where he sat +in an easy-chair waiting for her arrangement of the sofa. "What makes +you ask?" + +He answered with another question. "Does he know that we had thought of +staying here?" + +"Why, we've always talked of that, haven't we? Yes, he knows it. Didn't +you want him to know it, papa? You ought to have begun on the ship, +then. Of course I've asked him what sort of place it was. I'm sorry if +you didn't want me to." + +"Have I said that? It's perfectly easy to push on to Paris. Unless--" + +"Unless what?" Agatha dropped the pillow, and listened respectfully. But +in spite of her filial attitude she could not keep her youth and strength +and courage from quelling the forces of the elderly man. + +He said querulously, "I don't see why you take that tone with me. You +certainly know what I mean. But if you don't care to deal openly with +me, I won't ask you." He dropped his eyes from her face, and at the same +time a deep blush began to tinge it, growing up from her neck to her +forehead. "You must know--you're not a child," he continued, still with +averted eyes, "that this sort of thing can't go on... It must be +something else, or it mustn't be anything at all. I don't ask you for +your confidence, and you know that I've never sought to control you." + +This was not the least true, but Agatha answered, either absently or +provisionally, "No." + +"And I don't seek to do so now. If you have nothing that you wish to +tell me--" + +He waited, and after what seemed a long time, she asked as if she had not +heard him, "Will you lie down a little before your supper, papa?" + +"I will lie down when I feel like it," he answered. "Send August with +the supper; he can look after me." + +His resentful tone, even more than his words, dismissed her, but she left +him without apparent grievance, saying quietly, "I will send August." + + + + +LXVII. + +Agatha did not come down to supper with Burnamy. She asked August, when +she gave him her father's order, to have a cup of tea sent to her room, +where, when it came, she remained thinking so long that it was rather +tepid by the time she drank it. + +Then she went to her window, and looked out, first above and next below. +Above, the moon was hanging over the gardened hollow before the Museum +with the airy lightness of an American moon. Below was Burnamy behind +the tubbed evergreens, sitting tilted in his chair against the house +wall, with the spark of his cigar fainting and flashing like an American +firefly. Agatha went down to the door, after a little delay, and seemed +surprised to find him there; at least she said, "Oh!" in a tone of +surprise. + +Burnamy stood up, and answered, "Nice night." + +"Beautiful!" she breathed. "I didn't suppose the sky in Germany could +ever be so clear." + +"It seems to be doing its best." + +"The flowers over there look like ghosts in the light," she said +dreamily. + +"They're not. Don't you want to get your hat and wrap, and go over and +expose the fraud?" + +"Oh," she answered, as if it were merely a question of the hat and wrap, +"I have them." + +They sauntered through the garden walks for a while, long enough to have +ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if +they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, +they sat down, and she said, "I don't know that I've seen the moon so +clear since we left Carlsbad." At the last word his heart gave a jump +that seemed to lodge it in his throat and kept him from speaking, so that +she could resume without interruption, "I've got something of yours, that +you left at the Posthof. The girl that broke the dishes found it, and +Lili gave it to Mrs. March for you." This did not account for Agatha's +having the thing, whatever it was; but when she took a handkerchief from +her belt, and put out her hand with it toward him, he seemed to find that +her having it had necessarily followed. He tried to take it from her, +but his own hand trembled so that it clung to hers, and he gasped, "Can't +you say now, what you wouldn't say then?" + +The logical sequence was no more obvious than be fore; but she apparently +felt it in her turn as he had felt it in his. She whispered back, "Yes," +and then she could not get out anything more till she entreated in a +half-stifled voice, "Oh, don't!" ` + +"No, no!" he panted. "I won't--I oughtn't to have done it--I beg your +pardon--I oughtn't to have spoken,--even--I--" + +She returned in a far less breathless and tremulous fashion, but still +between laughing and crying, "I meant to make you. And now, if you're +ever sorry, or I'm ever too topping about anything, you can be perfectly +free to say that you'd never have spoken if you hadn't seen that I wanted +you to." + +"But I didn't see any such thing," he protested. "I spoke because I +couldn't help it any longer." + +She laughed triumphantly. "Of course you think so! And that shows that +you are only a man after all; in spite of your finessing. But I am going +to have the credit of it. I knew that you were holding back because you +were too proud, or thought you hadn't the right, or something. Weren't +you?" She startled him with the sudden vehemence of her challenge: "If +you pretend, that you weren't I shall never forgive you!" + +"But I was! Of course I was. I was afraid--" + +"Isn't that what I said?" She triumphed over him with another laugh, and +cowered a little closer to him, if that could be. + +They were standing, without knowing how they had got to their feet; and +now without any purpose of the kind, they began to stroll again among the +garden paths, and to ask and to answer questions, which touched every +point of their common history, and yet left it a mine of inexhaustible +knowledge for all future time. Out of the sweet and dear delight of this +encyclopedian reserve two or three facts appeared with a present +distinctness. One of these was that Burnamy had regarded her refusal to +be definite at Carlsbad as definite refusal, and had meant never to see +her again, and certainly never to speak again of love to her. Another +point was that she had not resented his coming back that last night, but +had been proud and happy in it as proof of his love, and had always meant +somehow to let him know that she was torched by his trusting her enough +to come back while be was still under that cloud with Mr. Stoller. With +further logic, purely of the heart, she acquitted him altogether of wrong +in that affair, and alleged in proof, what Mr. Stoller had said of it to +Mr. March. Burnamy owned that he knew what Stoller had said, but even in +his present condition he could not accept fully her reading of that +obscure passage of his life. He preferred to put the question by, and +perhaps neither of them cared anything about it except as it related to +the fact that they were now each other's forever. + +They agreed that they must write to Mr. and Mrs. March at once; or at +least, Agatha said, as soon as she had spoken to her father. At her +mention of her father she was aware of a doubt, a fear, in Burnamy which +expressed itself by scarcely more than a spiritual consciousness from his +arm to the hands which she had clasped within it. "He has always +appreciated you," she said courageously, "and I know he will see it in +the right light." + +She probably meant no more than to affirm her faith in her own ability +finally to bring her father to a just mind concerning it; but Burnamy +accepted her assurance with buoyant hopefulness, and said he would see +General Triscoe the first thing in the morning. + +"No, I will see him," she said, "I wish to see him first; he will expect +it of me. We had better go in, now," she added, but neither made any +motion for the present to do so. On the contrary, they walked in the +other direction, and it was an hour after Agatha declared their duty in +the matter before they tried to fulfil it. + +Then, indeed, after they returned to the hotel, she lost no time in going +to her father beyond that which must be given to a long hand-pressure +under the fresco of the five poets on the stairs landing, where her ways +and Burnamy's parted. She went into her own room, and softly opened the +door into her father's and listened. + +"Well?" he said in a sort of challenging voice. + +"Have you been asleep?" she asked. + +"I've just blown out my light. What has kept you?" + +She did not reply categorically. Standing there in the sheltering dark, +she said, "Papa, I wasn't very candid with you, this afternoon. I am +engaged to Mr. Burnamy." + +"Light the candle," said her father. "Or no," he added before she could +do so. "Is it quite settled?" + +"Quite," she answered in a voice that admitted of no doubt. "That is, as +far as it can be, without you." + +"Don't be a hypocrite, Agatha," said the general. "And let me try to get +to sleep. You know I don't like it, and you know I can't help it." + +"Yes," the girl assented. + +"Then go to bed," said the general concisely. + +Agatha did not obey her father. She thought she ought to kiss him, but +she decided that she had better postpone this; so she merely gave him a +tender goodnight, to which he made no response, and shut herself into her +own room, where she remained sitting and staring out into the moonlight, +with a smile that never left her lips. + +When the moon sank below the horizon, the sky was pale with the coming +day, but before it was fairly dawn, she saw something white, not much +greater than some moths, moving before her window. She pulled the valves +open and found it a bit of paper attached to a thread dangling from +above. She broke it loose and in the morning twilight she read the great +central truth of the universe: + +"I love you. L. J. B." + +She wrote under the tremendous inspiration: + +"So do I. Don't be silly. A. T." + +She fastened the paper to the thread again, and gave it a little twitch. +She waited for the low note of laughter which did not fail to flutter +down from above; then she threw herself upon the bed, and fell asleep. + +It was not so late as she thought when she woke, and it seemed, at +breakfast, that Burnamy had been up still earlier. Of the three involved +in the anxiety of the night before General Triscoe was still respited +from it by sleep, but he woke much more haggard than either of the young +people. They, in fact, were not at all haggard; the worst was over, if +bringing their engagement to his knowledge was the worst; the formality +of asking his consent which Burnamy still had to go through was +unpleasant, but after all it was a formality. Agatha told him everything +that had passed between herself and her father, and if it had not that +cordiality on his part which they could have wished it was certainly not +hopelessly discouraging. + +They agreed at breakfast that Burnamy had better have it over as quickly +as possible, and he waited only till August came down with the general's +tray before going up to his room. The young fellow did not feel more at +his ease than the elder meant he should in taking the chair to which the +general waved him from where he lay in bed; and there was no talk wasted +upon the weather between them. + +"I suppose I know what you have come for, Mr. Burnamy," said General +Triscoe in a tone which was rather judicial than otherwise, "and I +suppose you know why you have come." The words certainly opened the way +for Burnamy, but he hesitated so long to take it that the general had +abundant time to add, "I don't pretend that this event is unexpected, but +I should like to know what reason you have for thinking I should wish you +to marry my daughter. I take it for granted that you are attached to +each other, and we won't waste time on that point. Not to beat about the +bush, on the next point, let me ask at once what your means of supporting +her are. How much did you earn on that newspaper in Chicago?" + +"Fifteen hundred dollars," Burnamy answered, promptly enough. + +"Did you earn anything more, say within the last year?" + +"I got three hundred dollars advance copyright for a book I sold to a +publisher." The glory had not yet faded from the fact in Burnamy's mind. + +"Eighteen hundred. What did you get for your poem in March's book?" + +"That's a very trifling matter: fifteen dollars." + +"And your salary as private secretary to that man Stoller?" + +"Thirty dollars a week, and my expenses. But I wouldn't take that, +General Triscoe," said Burnamy. + +General Triscoe, from his 'lit de justice', passed this point in silence. +"Have you any one dependent on you?" + +"My mother; I take care of my mother," answered Burnamy, proudly. + +"Since you have broken with Stoller, what are your prospects?" + +"I have none." + +"Then you don't expect to support my daughter; you expect to live upon +her means." + +"I expect to do nothing of the kind!" cried Burnamy. "I should be +ashamed--I should feel disgraced--I should--I don't ask you--I don't ask +her till I have the means to support her--" + +"If you were very fortunate," continued the general, unmoved by the young +fellow's pain, and unperturbed by the fact that he had himself lived upon +his wife's means as long as she lived, and then upon his daughter's, "if +you went back to Stoller--" + +"I wouldn't go back to him. I don't say he's knowingly a rascal, but +he's ignorantly a rascal, and he proposed a rascally thing to me. I +behaved badly to him, and I'd give anything to undo the wrong I let him +do himself; but I'll never go back to him." + +"If you went back, on your old salary," the general persisted pitilessly, +"you would be very fortunate if you brought your earnings up to twenty- +five hundred a year." + +"Yes--" + +"And how far do you think that would go in supporting my daughter on the +scale she is used to? I don't speak of your mother, who has the first +claim upon you." + +Burnamy sat dumb; and his head which he had lifted indignantly when the +question was of Stoller, began to sink. + +The general went on. "You ask me to give you my daughter when you +haven't money enough to keep her in gowns; you ask me to give her to a +stranger--" + +"Not quite a stranger, General Triscoe," Burnamy protested. "You have +known me for three months at least, and any one who knows me in Chicago +will tell you--" + +"A stranger, and worse than a stranger," the general continued, so +pleased with the logical perfection of his position that he almost +smiled, and certainly softened toward Burnamy. "It isn't a question of +liking you, Mr. Burnamy, but of knowing you; my daughter likes you; so do +the Marches; so does everybody who has met you. I like you myself. +You've done me personally a thousand kindnesses. But I know very little +of you, in spite of our three months' acquaintance; and that little is-- +But you shall judge for yourself! You were in the confidential employ of +a man who trusted you, and you let him betray himself." + +"I did. I don't excuse it. The thought of it burns like fire. But it +wasn't done maliciously; it wasn't done falsely; it was done +inconsiderately; and when it was done, it seemed irrevocable. But it +wasn't; I could have prevented, I could have stooped the mischief; and I +didn't! I can never outlive that." + +"I know," said the general relentlessly, "that you have never attempted +any defence. That has been to your credit with me. It inclined me to +overlook your unwarranted course in writing to my daughter, when you told +her you would never see her again. What did you expect me to think, +after that, of your coming back to see her? Or didn't you expect me to +know it?" + +"I expected you to know it; I knew she would tell you. But I don't +excuse that, either. It was acting a lie to come back. All I can say is +that I had to see her again for one last time." + +"And to make sure that it was to be the last time, you offered yourself +to her." + +"I couldn't help doing that." + +"I don't say you could. I don't judge the facts at all. I leave them +altogether to you; and you shall say what a man in my position ought to +say to such a man as you have shown yourself." + +"No, I will say." The door into the adjoining room was flung open, and +Agatha flashed in from it. + +Her father looked coldly at her impassioned face. "Have you been +listening?" he asked. + +"I have been hearing--" + +"Oh!" As nearly as a man could, in bed, General Triscoe shrugged. + +"I suppose I had, a right to be in my own room. I couldn't help hearing; +and I was perfectly astonished at you, papa, the cruel way you went on, +after all you've said about Mr. Stoller, and his getting no more than he +deserved." + +"That doesn't justify me," Burnamy began, but she cut him short almost as +severely as she--had dealt with her father. + +"Yes, it does! It justifies you perfectly! And his wanting you to +falsify the whole thing afterwards, more than justifies you." + +Neither of the men attempted anything in reply to her casuistry; they +both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went +on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and now to the +other. + +"And besides, if it didn't justify you, what you have done yourself +would; and your never denying it, or trying to excuse it, makes it the +same as if you hadn't done it, as far as you are concerned; and that is +all I care for." Burnamy started, as if with the sense of having heard +something like this before, and with surprise at hearing it now; and she +flushed a little as she added tremulously, "And I should never, never +blame you for it, after that; it's only trying to wriggle out of things +which I despise, and you've never done that. And he simply had to come +back," she turned to her father, "and tell me himself just how it was. +And you said yourself, papa--or the same as said--that he had no right to +suppose I was interested in his affairs unless he--unless--And I should +never have forgiven him, if he hadn't told me then that he that he had +come back because he--felt the way he did. I consider that that +exonerated him for breaking his word, completely. If he hadn't broken +his word I should have thought he had acted very cruelly and--and +strangely. And ever since then, he has behaved so nobly, so honorably, +so delicately, that I don't believe he would ever have said anything +again--if I hadn't fairly forced him. Yes! Yes, I did!" she cried at a +movement of remonstrance from Burnamy. "And I shall always be proud of +you for it." Her father stared steadfastly at her, and he only lifted +his eyebrows, for change of expression, when she went over to where +Burnamy stood, and put her hand in his with a certain childlike +impetuosity. "And as for the rest," she declared, "everything I have is +his; just as everything of his would be mine if I had nothing. Or if he +wishes to take me without anything, then he can have me so, and I sha'n't +be afraid but we can get along somehow." She added, "I have managed +without a maid, ever since I left home, and poverty has no terrors for +me!" + + + + +LXVIII. + +General Triscoe submitted to defeat with the patience which soldiers +learn. He did not submit amiably; that would have been out of character, +and perhaps out of reason; but Burnamy and Agatha were both so amiable +that they supplied good-humor for all. They flaunted their rapture in +her father's face as little as they could, but he may have found their +serene satisfaction, their settled confidence in their fate, as hard to +bear as a more boisterous happiness would have been. + +It was agreed among them all that they were to return soon to America, +and Burnamy was to find some sort of literary or journalistic employment +in New York. She was much surer than he that this could be done with +perfect ease; but they were of an equal mind that General Triscoe was not +to be disturbed in any of his habits, or vexed in the tenor of his +living; and until Burnamy was at least self-supporting there must be no +talk of their being married. + +The talk of their being engaged was quite enough for the time. It +included complete and minute auto-biographies on both sides, reciprocal +analyses of character, a scientifically exhaustive comparison of tastes, +ideas and opinions; a profound study of their respective chins, noses, +eyes, hands, heights, complexions, moles and freckles, with some account +of their several friends. + +In this occupation, which was profitably varied by the confession of what +they had each thought and felt and dreamt concerning the other at every +instant since they met, they passed rapidly the days which the persistent +anxiety of General Triscoe interposed before the date of their leaving +Weimar for Paris, where it was arranged that they should spend a month +before sailing for New York. Burnamy had a notion, which Agatha +approved, of trying for something there on the New York-Paris Chronicle; +and if he got it they might not go home at once. His gains from that +paper had eked out his copyright from his book, and had almost paid his +expenses in getting the material which he had contributed to it. They +were not so great, however, but that his gold reserve was reduced to less +than a hundred dollars, counting the silver coinages which had remained +to him in crossing and recrossing frontiers. He was at times dimly +conscious of his finances, but he buoyantly disregarded the facts, as +incompatible with his status as Agatha's betrothed, if not unworthy of +his character as a lover in the abstract. + +The afternoon before they were to leave Weimar, they spent mostly in the +garden before the Grand-Ducal Museum, in a conference so important that +when it came on to rain, at one moment, they put up Burnamy's umbrella, +and continued to sit under it rather than interrupt the proceedings even +to let Agatha go back to the hotel and look after her father's packing. +Her own had been finished before dinner, so as to leave her the whole +afternoon for their conference, and to allow her father to remain in +undisturbed possession of his room as long as possible. + +What chiefly remained to be put into the general's trunk were his coats +and trousers, hanging in the closet, and August took these down, and +carefully folded and packed them. Then, to make sure that nothing had +been forgotten, Agatha put a chair into the closet when she came in, and +stood on it to examine the shelf which stretched above the hooks. + +There seemed at first to be nothing on it, and then there seemed to be +something in the further corner, which when it was tiptoed for, proved to +be a bouquet of flowers, not so faded as to seem very old; the blue satin +ribbon which they were tied up with, and which hung down half a yard, was +of entire freshness except far the dust of the shelf where it had lain. + +Agatha backed out into the room with her find in her hand, and examined +it near to, and then at arm's length. August stood by with a pair of the +general's trousers lying across his outstretched hands, and as Agatha +absently looked round at him, she caught a light of intelligence in his +eyes which changed her whole psychological relation to the withered +bouquet. Till then it had been a lifeless, meaningless bunch of flowers, +which some one, for no motive, had tossed up on that dusty shelf in the +closet. At August's smile it became something else. Still she asked +lightly enough, "Was ist loss, August?" + +His smile deepened and broadened. "Fur die Andere," he explained. + +Agatha demanded in English, "What do you mean by feardy ondery?" + +"Oddaw lehdy." + +"Other lady?" August nodded, rejoicing in big success, and Agatha closed +the door into her own room, where the general had been put for the time +so as to be spared the annoyance of the packing; then she sat down with +her hands in her lap, and the bouquet in her hands. "Now, August," she +said very calmly, "I want you to tell me-ich wunsche Sie zu mir sagen-- +what other lady--wass andere Dame--these flowers belonged to--diese +Blumen gehorte zu. Verstehen Sie?" + +August nodded brightly, and with German carefully adjusted to Agatha's +capacity, and with now and then a word or phrase of English, he conveyed +that before she and her Herr Father had appeared, there had been in +Weimar another American Fraulein with her Frau Mother; they had not +indeed staid in that hotel, but had several times supped there with the +young Herr Bornahmee, who was occupying that room before her Herr Father. +The young Herr had been much about with these American Damen, driving and +walking with them, and sometimes dining or supping with them at their +hotel, The Elephant. August had sometimes carried notes to them from the +young Herr, and he had gone for the bouquet which the gracious Fraulein +was holding, on the morning of the day that the American Damen left by +the train for Hanover. + +August was much helped and encouraged throughout by the friendly +intelligence of the gracious Fraulein, who smiled radiantly in clearing +up one dim point after another, and who now and then supplied the English +analogues which he sought in his effort to render his German more +luminous. + +At the end she returned to the work of packing, in which she directed +him, and sometimes assisted him with her own hands, having put the +bouquet on the mantel to leave herself free. She took it up again and +carried it into her own room, when she went with August to summon her +father back to his. She bade August say to the young Herr, if he saw +him, that she was going to sup with her father, and August gave her +message to Burnamy, whom he met on the stairs coming down as he was going +up with their tray. + +Agatha usually supped with her father, but that evening Burnamy was less +able than usual to bear her absence in the hotel dining-room, and he went +up to a cafe in the town for his supper. He did not stay long, and when +he returned his heart gave a joyful lift at sight of Agatha looking out +from her balcony, as if she were looking for him. He made her a gay +flourishing bow, lifting his hat high, and she came down to meet him at +the hotel door. She had her hat on and jacket over one arm and she +joined him at once for the farewell walk he proposed in what they had +agreed to call their garden. + +She moved a little ahead of him, and when they reached the place where +they always sat, she shifted her jacket to the other arm and uncovered +the hand in which she had been carrying the withered bouquet. "Here is +something I found in your closet, when I was getting papa's things out." + +"Why, what is it?" he asked innocently, as he took it from her. + +"A bouquet, apparently," she answered, as he drew the long ribbons +through his fingers, and looked at the flowers curiously, with his head +aslant. + +"Where did you get it?" + +"On the shelf." + +It seemed a long time before Burnamy said with a long sigh, as of final +recollection, "Oh, yes," and then he said nothing; and they did not sit +down, but stood looking at each other. + +"Was it something you got for me, and forgot to give me?" she asked in a +voice which would not have misled a woman, but which did its work with +the young man. + +He laughed and said, "Well, hardly! The general has been in the room +ever since you came." + +"Oh, yes. Then perhaps somebody left it there before you had the room?" + +Burnamy was silent again, but at last he said, "No, I flung it up there I +had forgotten all about it." + +"And you wish me to forget about it, too?" Agatha asked in a gayety of +tone that still deceived him. + +"It would only be fair. You made me," he rejoined, and there was +something so charming in his words and way, that she would have been glad +to do it. + +But she governed herself against the temptation and said, "Women are not +good at forgetting, at least till they know what." + +"Oh, I'll tell you, if you want to know," he said with a laugh, and at +the words she--sank provisionally in their accustomed seat. He sat down +beside her, but not so near as usual, and he waited so long before he +began that it seemed as if he had forgotten again. "Why, it's nothing. +Miss Etkins and her mother were here before you came, and this is a +bouquet that I meant to give her at the train when she left. But I +decided I wouldn't, and I threw it onto the shelf in the closet." + +"May I ask why you thought of taking a bouquet to her at the train?" + +"Well, she and her mother--I had been with them a good deal, and I +thought it would be civil." + +"And why did you decide not to be civil?" + +"I didn't want it to look like more than civility." + +"Were they here long?" + +"About a week. They left just after the Marches came." + +Agatha seemed not to heed the answer she had exacted. She sat reclined +in the corner of the seat, with her head drooping. After an interval +which was long to Burnamy she began to pull at a ring on the third finger +of her left hand, absently, as if she did not know what she was doing; +but when she had got it off she held it towards Burnamy and said quietly, +"I think you had better have this again," and then she rose and moved +slowly and weakly away. + +He had taken the ring mechanically from her, and he stood a moment +bewildered; then he pressed after her. + +"Agatha, do you--you don't mean--" + +"Yes," she said, without looking round at his face, which she knew was +close to her shoulder. "It's over. It isn't what you've done. It's +what you are. I believed in you, in spite of what you did to that man-- +and your coming back when you said you wouldn't--and--But I see now that +what you did was you; it was your nature; and I can't believe in you any +more." + +"Agatha!" he implored. "You're not going to be so unjust! There was +nothing between you and me when that girl was here! I had a right to--" + +"Not if you really cared for me! Do you think I would have flirted with +any one so soon, if I had cared for you as you pretended you did for me +that night in Carlsbad? Oh, I don't say you're false. But you're +fickle--" + +"But I'm not fickle! From the first moment I saw you, I never cared for +any one but you!" + +"You have strange ways of showing your devotion. Well, say you are not +fickle. Say, that I'm fickle. I am. I have changed my mind. I see +that it would never do. I leave you free to follow all the turning and +twisting of your fancy." She spoke rapidly, almost breathlessly, and she +gave him no chance to get out the words that seemed to choke him. She +began to run, but at the door of the hotel she stopped and waited till he +came stupidly up. "I have a favor to ask, Mr. Burnamy. I beg you will +not see me again, if you can help it before we go to-morrow. My father +and I are indebted to you for too many kindnesses, and you mustn't take +any more trouble on our account. August can see us off in the morning." + +She nodded quickly, and was gone in-doors while he was yet struggling +with his doubt of the reality of what had all so swiftly happened. + +General Triscoe was still ignorant of any change in the status to which +he had reconciled himself with so much difficulty, when he came down to +get into the omnibus for the train. Till then he had been too proud to +ask what had become of Burnamy, though he had wondered, but now he looked +about and said impatiently, "I hope that young man isn't going to keep us +waiting." + +Agatha was pale and worn with sleeplessness, but she said firmly, "He +isn't going, papa. I will tell you in the train. August will see to the +tickets and the baggage." + +August conspired with the traeger to get them a first-class compartment +to themselves. But even with the advantages of this seclusion Agatha's +confidences to her father were not full. She told her father that her +engagement was broken for reasons that did not mean anything very wrong +in Mr. Burnamy but that convinced her they could never be happy together. +As she did not give the reasons, he found a natural difficulty in +accepting them, and there was something in the situation which appealed +strongly to his contrary-mindedness. Partly from this, partly from his +sense of injury in being obliged so soon to adjust himself to new +conditions, and partly from his comfortable feeling of security from an +engagement to which his assent had been forced, he said, "I hope you're +not making a mistake." + +"Oh, no," she answered, and she attested her conviction by a burst of +sobbing that lasted well on the way to the first stop of the train. + + + + +LXIX. + +It would have been always twice as easy to go direct from Berlin to the +Hague through Hanover; but the Marches decided to go by Frankfort and the +Rhine, because they wished to revisit the famous river, which they +remembered from their youth, and because they wished to stop at +Dusseldorf, where Heinrich Heine was born. Without this Mrs. March, who +kept her husband up to his early passion for the poet with a feeling that +she was defending him from age in it, said that their silver wedding +journey would not be complete; and he began himself to think that it +would be interesting. + +They took a sleeping-car for Frankfort and they woke early as people do +in sleeping-cars everywhere. March dressed and went out for a cup of the +same coffee of which sleeping-car buffets have the awful secret in Europe +as well as America, and for a glimpse of the twilight landscape. One +gray little town, towered and steepled and red-roofed within its +mediaeval walls, looked as if it would have been warmer in something +more. There was a heavy dew, if not a light frost, over all, and in +places a pale fog began to lift from the low hills. Then the sun rose +without dispersing the cold, which was afterwards so severe in their room +at the Russischer Hof in Frankfort that in spite of the steam-radiators +they sat shivering in all their wraps till breakfast-time. + +There was no steam on in the radiators, of course; when they implored the +portier for at least a lamp to warm their hands by he turned on all the +electric lights without raising the temperature in the slightest degree. +Amidst these modern comforts they were so miserable that they vowed each +other to shun, as long as they were in Germany, or at least while the +summer lasted, all hotels which were steam-heated and electric-lighted. +They heated themselves somewhat with their wrath, and over their +breakfast they relented so far as to suffer themselves a certain interest +in the troops of all arms beginning to pass the hotel. They were +fragments of the great parade, which had ended the day before, and they +were now drifting back to their several quarters of the empire. Many of +them were very picturesque, and they had for the boys and girls running +before and beside them, the charm which armies and circus processions +have for children everywhere. But their passage filled with cruel +anxiety a large old dog whom his master had left harnessed to a milk-cart +before the hotel door; from time to time he lifted up his voice, and +called to the absentee with hoarse, deep barks that almost shook him from +his feet. + +The day continued blue and bright and cold, and the Marches gave the +morning to a rapid survey of the city, glad that it was at least not wet. +What afterwards chiefly remained to them was the impression of an old +town as quaint almost and as Gothic as old Hamburg, and a new town, +handsome and regular, and, in the sudden arrest of some streets, +apparently overbuilt. The modern architectural taste was of course +Parisian; there is no other taste for the Germans; but in the prevailing +absence of statues there was a relief from the most oppressive +characteristic of the imperial capital which was a positive delight. +Some sort of monument to the national victory over France there must have +been; but it must have been unusually inoffensive, for it left no record +of itself in the travellers' consciousness. They were aware of gardened +squares and avenues, bordered by stately dwellings, of dignified civic +edifices, and of a vast arid splendid railroad station, such as the state +builds even in minor European cities, but such as our paternal +corporations have not yet given us anywhere in America. They went to the +Zoological Garden, where they heard the customary Kalmucks at their +public prayers behind a high board fence; and as pilgrims from the most +plutrocratic country in the world March insisted that they must pay their +devoirs at the shrine of the Rothschilds, whose natal banking-house they +revered from the outside. + +It was a pity, he said, that the Rothschilds were not on his letter of +credit; he would have been willing to pay tribute to the Genius of +Finance in the percentage on at least ten pounds. But he consoled +himself by reflecting that he did not need the money; and he consoled +Mrs. March for their failure to penetrate to the interior of the +Rothschilds' birthplace by taking her to see the house where Goethe was +born. The public is apparently much more expected there, and in the +friendly place they were no doubt much more welcome than they would have +been in the Rothschild house. Under that roof they renewed a happy +moment of Weimar, which after the lapse of a week seemed already so +remote. They wondered, as they mounted the stairs from the basement +opening into a clean little court, how Burnamy was getting on, and +whether it had yet come to that understanding between him and Agatha, +which Mrs. March, at least, had meant to be inevitable. Then they became +part of some such sight-seeing retinue as followed the custodian about in +the Goethe horse in Weimar, and of an emotion indistinguishable from that +of their fellow sight-seers. They could make sure, afterwards, of a +personal pleasure in a certain prescient classicism of the house. It +somehow recalled both the Goethe houses at Weimar, and it somehow +recalled Italy. It is a separate house of two floors above the entrance, +which opens to a little court or yard, and gives access by a decent +stairway to the living-rooms. The chief of these is a sufficiently +dignified parlor or salon, and the most important is the little chamber +in the third story where the poet first opened his eyes to the light +which he rejoiced in for so long a life, and which, dying, he implored to +be with him more. It is as large as his death-chamber in Weimar, where +he breathed this prayer, and it looks down into the Italian-looking +court, where probably he noticed the world for the first time, and +thought it a paved enclosure thirty or forty feet square. In the birth- +room they keep his puppet theatre, and the place is fairly suggestive of +his childhood; later, in his youth, he could look from the parlor windows +and see the house where his earliest love dwelt. So much remains of +Goethe in the place where he was born, and as such things go, it is not a +little. The house is that of a prosperous and well-placed citizen, and +speaks of the senatorial quality in his family which Heine says he was +fond of recalling, rather than the sartorial quality of the ancestor who, +again as Heine says, mended the Republic's breeches. + +From the Goethe house, one drives by the Goethe monument to the Romer, +the famous town-hall of the old free imperial city which Frankfort once +was; and by this route the Marches drove to it, agreeing with their +coachman that he was to keep as much in the sun as possible. It was +still so cold that when they reached the Romer, and he stopped in a broad +blaze of the only means of heating that they have in Frankfort in the +summer, the travellers were loath to leave it for the chill interior, +where the German emperors were elected for so many centuries. As soon as +an emperor was chosen, in the great hall effigied round with the +portraits of his predecessors, he hurried out in the balcony, ostensibly +to show himself to the people, but really, March contended, to warm up a +little in the sun. The balcony was undergoing repairs that day, and the +travellers could not go out on it; but under the spell of the historic +interest of the beautiful old Gothic place, they lingered in the interior +till they were half-torpid with the cold. Then she abandoned to him the +joint duty of viewing the cathedral, and hurried to their carriage where +she basked in the sun till he came to her. He returned shivering, after +a half-hour's absence, and pretended that she had missed the greatest +thing in the world, but as he could never be got to say just what she had +lost, and under the closest cross-examination could not prove that this +cathedral was memorably different from hundreds of other fourteenth- +century cathedrals, she remained in a lasting content with the easier +part she had chosen. His only definite impression at the cathedral +seemed to be confined to a Bostonian of gloomily correct type, whom he +had seen doing it with his Baedeker, and not letting an object of +interest escape; and his account of her fellow-townsman reconciled Mrs. +March more and more to not having gone. + +As it was warmer out-doors than in-doors at Frankfort, and as the breadth +of sunshine increased with the approach of noon they gave the rest of the +morning to driving about and ignorantly enjoying the outside of many +Gothic churches, whose names even they did not trouble themselves to +learn. They liked the river Main whenever they came to it, because it +was so lately from Wurzburg, and because it was so beautiful with its +bridges, old and new, and its boats of many patterns. They liked the +market-place in front of the Romer not only because it was full of +fascinating bargains in curious crockery and wooden-ware, but because +there was scarcely any shade at all in it. They read from their Baedeker +that until the end of the last century no Jew was suffered to enter the +marketplace, and they rejoiced to find from all appearances that the Jews +had been making up for their unjust exclusion ever since. They were +almost as numerous there as the Anglo-Saxons were everywhere else in +Frankfort. These, both of the English and American branches of the race, +prevailed in the hotel diningroom, where the Marches had a mid-day dinner +so good that it almost made amends for the steam-heating and electric- +lighting. + +As soon as possible after dinner they took the train for Mayence, and ran +Rhinewards through a pretty country into what seemed a milder climate. +It grew so much milder, apparently, that a lady in their compartment to +whom March offered his forward-looking seat, ordered the window down when +the guard came, without asking their leave. Then the climate proved much +colder, and Mrs. March cowered under her shawls the rest of the way, and +would not be entreated to look at the pleasant level landscape near, or +the hills far off. He proposed to put up the window as peremptorily as +it had been put down, but she stayed him with a hoarse whisper, "She may +be another Baroness!" At first he did not know what she meant, then he +remembered the lady whose claims to rank her presence had so poorly +enforced on the way to Wurzburg, and he perceived that his wife was +practising a wise forbearance with their fellow-passengers, and giving +her a chance to turn out any sort of highhote she chose. She failed to +profit by the opportunity; she remained simply a selfish, disagreeable +woman, of no more perceptible distinction than their other fellow- +passenger, a little commercial traveller from Vienna (they resolved from +his appearance and the lettering on his valise that he was no other), who +slept with a sort of passionate intensity all the way to Mayence. + + + + +LXX. + +The Main widened and swam fuller as they approached the Rhine, and +flooded the low-lying fields in-places with a pleasant effect under a wet +sunset. When they reached the station in Mayence they drove interminably +to the hotel they had chosen on the river-shore, through a city handsomer +and cleaner than any American city they could think of, and great part of +the way by a street of dwellings nobler, Mrs. March owned, than even +Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It was planted, like that, with double +rows of trees, but lacked its green lawns; and at times the sign of +Weinhandlung at a corner, betrayed that there was no such restriction +against shops as keeps the Boston street so sacred. Otherwise they had +to confess once more that any inferior city of Germany is of a more +proper and dignified presence than the most parse-proud metropolis in +America. To be sure, they said, the German towns had generally a +thousand years' start; but all the same the fact galled them. + +It was very bleak, though very beautiful when they stopped before their +hotel on the Rhine, where all their impalpable memories of their visit to +Mayence thirty years earlier precipitated themselves into something +tangible. There were the reaches of the storied and fabled stream with +its boats and bridges and wooded shores and islands; there were the +spires and towers and roofs of the town on either bank crowding to the +river's brink; and there within-doors was the stately portier in gold +braid, and the smiling, bowing, hand-rubbing landlord, alluring them to +his most expensive rooms, which so late in the season he would fain have +had them take. But in a little elevator, that mounted slowly, very +slowly, in the curve of the stairs, they went higher to something lower, +and the landlord retired baked, and left them to the ministrations of the +serving-men who arrived with their large and small baggage. All these +retired in turn when they asked to have a fire lighted in the stove, +without which Mrs. March would never have taken the fine stately rooms, +and sent back a pretty young girl to do it. She came indignant, not +because she had come lugging a heavy hod of coal and a great arm-load of +wood, but because her sense of fitness was outraged by the strange +demand. + +"What!" she cried. "A fire in September!" + +"Yes," March returned, inspired to miraculous aptness in his German by +the exigency, "yes, if September is cold." + +The girl looked at him, and then, either because she thought him mad, or +liked him merry, burst into a loud laugh, and kindled the fire without a +word more. + +He lighted all the reluctant gas-jets in the vast gilt chandelier, and in +less than half an hour the temperature of the place rose to at least +sixty-five Fahrenheit, with every promise of going higher. Mrs. March +made herself comfortable in a deep chair before the stove, and said she +would have her supper there; and she bade him send her just such a supper +of chicken and honey and tea as they had all had in Mayence when they +supped in her aunt's parlor there all those years ago. He wished to +compute the years, but she drove him out with an imploring cry, and he +went down to a very gusty dining-room on the ground-floor, where he found +himself alone with a young English couple and their little boy. They +were friendly, intelligent people, and would have been conversable, +apparently, but for the terrible cold of the husband, which he said he +had contracted at the manoeuvres in Hombourg. March said he was going to +Holland, and the Englishman was doubtful of the warmth which March +expected to find there. He seemed to be suffering from a suspense of +faith as to the warmth anywhere; from time to time the door of the +dining-room self-opened in a silent, ghostly fashion into the court +without, and let in a chilling draught about the legs of all, till the +little English boy got down from his place and shut it. + +He alone continued cheerful, for March's spirits certainly did not rise +when some mumbling Americans came in and muttered over their meat at +another table. He hated to own it, but he had to own that wherever he +had met the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon race together in Europe, the +elder had shown, by a superior chirpiness, to the disadvantage of the +younger. The cast clothes of the old-fashioned British offishness seemed +to have fallen to the American travellers who were trying to be correct +and exemplary; and he would almost rather have had back the old-style +bragging Americans whom he no longer saw. He asked of an agreeable +fellow-countryman whom he found later in the reading-room, what had +become of these; and this compatriot said he had travelled with one only +the day before, who had posed before their whole compartment in his scorn +of the German landscape, the German weather, the German government, the +German railway management, and then turned out an American of German +birth! March found his wife in great bodily comfort when he went back to +her, but in trouble of mind about a clock which she had discovered +standing on the lacquered iron top of the stove. It was a French clock, +of architectural pretensions, in the taste of the first Empire, and it +looked as if it had not been going since Napoleon occupied Mayence early +in the century. But Mrs. March now had it sorely on her conscience +where, in its danger from the heat of the stove, it rested with the +weight of the Pantheon, whose classic form it recalled. She wondered +that no one had noticed it before the fire was kindled, and she required +her husband to remove it at once from the top of the stove to the mantel +under the mirror, which was the natural habitat of such a clock. He said +nothing could be simpler, but when he lifted it, it began to fall all +apart, like a clock in the house of the Hoodoo. Its marble base +dropped-off; its pillars tottered; its pediment swayed to one side. +While Mrs. March lamented her hard fate, and implored him to hurry it +together before any one came, he contrived to reconstruct it in its new +place. Then they both breathed freer, and returned to sit down before +the stove. But at the same moment they both saw, ineffaceably outlined +on the lacquered top, the basal form of the clock. The chambermaid would +see it in the morning; she would notice the removal of the clock, and +would make a merit of reporting its ruin by the heat to the landlord, and +in the end they would be mulcted of its value. Rather than suffer this +wrong they agreed to restore it to its place, and, let it go to +destruction upon its own terms. March painfully rebuilt it where he had +found it, and they went to bed with a bad conscience to worse dreams. + +He remembered, before he slept, the hour of his youth when he was in +Mayence before, and was so care free that he had heard with impersonal +joy two young American voices speaking English in the street under his +window. One of them broke from the common talk with a gay burlesque of +pathos in the line: + + "Oh heavens! she cried, my Heeding country save!" + +and then with a laughing good-night these unseen, unknown spirits of +youth parted and departed. Who were they, and in what different places, +with what cares or ills, had their joyous voices grown old, or fallen +silent for evermore? It was a moonlight night, March remembered, and he +remembered how he wished he were out in it with those merry fellows. + +He nursed the memory and the wonder in his dreaming thought, and he woke +early to other voices under his window. But now the voices, though +young, were many and were German, and the march of feet and the stamp of +hooves kept time with their singing. He drew his curtain and saw the +street filled with broken squads of men, some afoot and some on +horseback, some in uniform and some in civil dress with students' caps, +loosely straggling on and roaring forth that song whose words he could +not make out. At breakfast he asked the waiter what it all meant, and he +said that these were conscripts whose service had expired with the late +manoeuvres, and who were now going home. He promised March a translation +of the song, but he never gave it; and perhaps the sense of their joyful +home-going remained the more poetic with him because its utterance +remained inarticulate. + +March spent the rainy Sunday, on which they had fallen, in wandering +about the little city alone. His wife said she was tired and would sit +by the fire, and hear about Mayence when he came in. He went to the +cathedral, which has its renown for beauty and antiquity, and he there +added to his stock of useful information the fact that the people of +Mayence seemed very Catholic and very devout. They proved it by +preferring to any of the divine old Gothic shrines in the cathedral, an +ugly baroque altar, which was everywhere hung about with votive +offerings. A fashionably dressed young man and young girl sprinkled +themselves with holy water as reverently as if they had been old and +ragged. Some tourists strolled up and down the aisles with their red +guide-books, and studied the objects of interest. A resplendent beadle +in a cocked hat, and with along staff of authority posed before his own +ecclesiastical consciousness in blue and silver. At the high altar a +priest was saying mass, and March wondered whether his consciousness was +as wholly ecclesiastical as the beadle's, or whether somewhere in it he +felt the historical majesty, the long human consecration of the place. + +He wandered at random in the town through streets German and quaint and +old, and streets French and fine and new, and got back to the river, +which he crossed on one of the several handsome bridges. The rough river +looked chill under a sky of windy clouds, and he felt out of season, both +as to the summer travel, and as to the journey he was making. The summer +of life as well as the summer of that year was past. Better return to +his own radiator in his flat on Stuyvesant Square; to the great ugly +brutal town which, if it was not home to him, was as much home to him as +to any one. A longing for New York welled up his heart, which was +perhaps really a wish to be at work again. He said he must keep this +from his wife, who seemed not very well, and whom he must try to cheer up +when he returned to the hotel. + +But they had not a very joyous afternoon, and the evening was no gayer. +They said that if they had not ordered their letters sent to Dusseldorf +they believed they should push on to Holland without stopping; and March +would have liked to ask, Why not push on to America? But he forbore, and +he was afterwards glad that he had done so. + +In the morning their spirits rose with the sun, though the sun got up +behind clouds as usual; and they were further animated by the imposition +which the landlord practised upon them. After a distinct and repeated +agreement as to the price of their rooms he charged them twice as much, +and then made a merit of throwing off two marks out of the twenty he had +plundered them of. + +"Now I see," said Mrs. March, on their way down to the boat, "how +fortunate it was that we baked his clock. You may laugh, but I believe +we were the instruments of justice." + +"Do you suppose that clock was never baked before?" asked her husband. +"The landlord has his own arrangement with justice. When he overcharges +his parting guests he says to his conscience, Well, they baked my clock." + + + + +LXXI. + +The morning was raw, but it was something not to have it rainy; and the +clouds that hung upon the hills and hid their tops were at least as fine +as the long board signs advertising chocolate on the river banks. The +smoke rising from the chimneys of the manufactories of Mayence was not so +bad, either, when one got them in the distance a little; and March liked +the way the river swam to the stems of the trees on the low grassy +shores. It was like the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo in that, +and it was yellow and thick, like the Mississippi, though he thought he +remembered it blue and clear. A friendly German, of those who began to +come aboard more and more at all the landings after leaving Mayence, +assured him that be was right, and that the Rhine was unusually turbid +from the unusual rains. March had his own belief that whatever the color +of the Rhine might be the rains were not unusual, but he could not +gainsay the friendly German. + +Most of the passengers at starting were English and American; but they +showed no prescience of the international affinition which has since +realized itself, in their behavior toward one another. They held +silently apart, and mingled only in the effect of one young man who kept +the Marches in perpetual question whether he was a Bostonian or an +Englishman. His look was Bostonian, but his accent was English; and was +he a Bostonian who had been in England long enough to get the accent, or +was he an Englishman who had been in Boston long enough to get the look? +He wore a belated straw hat, and a thin sack-coat; and in the rush of the +boat through the raw air they fancied him very cold, and longed to offer +him one of their superabundant wraps. At times March actually lifted a +shawl from his knees, feeling sure that the stranger was English and that +he might make so bold with him; then at some glacial glint in the young +man's eye, or at some petrific expression of his delicate face, he felt +that he was a Bostonian, and lost courage and let the shawl sink again. +March tried to forget him in the wonder of seeing the Germans begin to +eat and drink, as soon as they came on boards either from the baskets +they had brought with them, or from the boat's provision. But he +prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events +of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench +when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At +the table d'hote, which was served when the landscape began to be less +interesting, the guests were expected to hand their plates across the +table to the stewards but to keep their knives and forks throughout the +different courses, and at each of these partial changes March felt the +young man's chilly eyes upon him, inculpating him for the semi- +civilization of the management. At such times he knew that he was a +Bostonian. + +The weather cleared, as they descended the river, and under a sky at last +cloudless, the Marches had moments of swift reversion to their former +Rhine journey, when they were young and the purple light of love mantled +the vineyarded hills along the shore, and flushed the castled steeps. +The scene had lost nothing of the beauty they dimly remembered; there +were certain features of it which seemed even fairer and grander than +they remembered. The town of Bingen, where everybody who knows the poem +was more or less born, was beautiful in spite of its factory chimneys, +though there were no compensating castles near it; and the castles seemed +as good as those of the theatre. Here and there some of them had been +restored and were occupied, probably by robber barons who had gone into +trade. Others were still ruinous, and there was now and then such a mere +gray snag that March, at sight of it, involuntarily put his tongue to the +broken tooth which he was keeping for the skill of the first American +dentist. + +For natural sublimity the Rhine scenery, as they recognized once more, +does not compare with the Hudson scenery; and they recalled one point on +the American river where the Central Road tunnels a jutting cliff, which +might very well pass for the rock of the Loreley, where she dreams + + 'Solo sitting by the shores of old romance.' + +and the trains run in and out under her knees unheeded. "Still, still +you know," March argued, "this is the Loreley on the Rhine, and not the +Loreley on the Hudson; and I suppose that makes all the difference. +Besides, the Rhine doesn't set up to be sublime; it only means to be +storied and dreamy and romantic and it does it. And then we have really +got no Mouse Tower; we might build one, to be sure." + +"Well, we have got no denkmal, either," said his wife, meaning the +national monument to the German reconquest of the Rhine, which they had +just passed, "and that is something in our favor." + +"It was too far off for us to see how ugly it was," he returned. + +"The denkmal at Coblenz was so near that the bronze Emperor almost rode +aboard the boat." + +He could not answer such a piece of logic as that. He yielded, and began +to praise the orcharded levels which now replaced the vine-purpled slopes +of the upper river. He said they put him in mind of orchards that he had +known in his boyhood; and they, agreed that the supreme charm of travel, +after all, was not in seeing something new and strange, but in finding +something familiar and dear in the heart of the strangeness. + +At Cologne they found this in the tumult of getting ashore with their +baggage and driving from the steamboat landing to the railroad station, +where they were to get their train for Dusseldorf an hour later. The +station swarmed with travellers eating and drinking and smoking; but they +escaped from it for a precious half of their golden hour, and gave the +time to the great cathedral, which was built, a thousand years ago, just +round the corner from the station, and is therefore very handy to it. +Since they saw the cathedral last it had been finished, and now under a +cloudless evening sky, it soared and swept upward like a pale flame. +Within it was a bit over-clean, a bit bare, but without it was one of the +great memories of the race, the record of a faith which wrought miracles +of beauty, at least, if not piety. + +The train gave the Marches another, and last, view of it as they slowly +drew out of the city, and began to run through a level country walled +with far-off hills; past fields of buckwheat showing their stems like +coral under their black tops; past peasant houses changing their wonted +shape to taller and narrower forms; past sluggish streams from which the +mist rose and hung over the meadows, under a red sunset, glassy clear +till the manifold factory chimneys of Dusseldorf stained it with their +dun smoke. + +This industrial greeting seemed odd from the town where Heinrich Heine +was born; but when they had eaten their supper in the capital little +hotel they found there, and went out for a stroll, they found nothing to +remind them of the factories, and much to make them think of the poet. +The moon, beautiful and perfect as a stage moon, came up over the +shoulder of a church as they passed down a long street which they had all +to themselves. Everybody seemed to have gone to bed, but at a certain +corner a girl opened a window above them, and looked out at the moon. + +When they returned to their hotel they found a highwalled garden facing +it, full of black depths of foliage. In the night March woke and saw the +moon standing over the garden, and silvering its leafy tops. This was +really as it should be in the town where the idolized poet of his youth +was born; the poet whom of all others he had adored, and who had once +seemed like a living friend; who had been witness of his first love, and +had helped him to speak it. His wife used to laugh at him for his Heine- +worship in those days; but she had since come to share it, and she, +even more than he, had insisted upon this pilgrimage. He thought long +thoughts of the past, as he looked into the garden across the way, with +an ache for his perished self and the dead companionship of his youth, +all ghosts together in the silvered shadow. The trees shuddered in the +night breeze, and its chill penetrated to him where he stood. + +His wife called to him from her room, "What are you doing?" + +"Oh, sentimentalizing," he answered boldly. + +"Well, you will be sick," she said, and he crept back into bed again. + +They had sat up late, talking in a glad excitement. But he woke early, +as an elderly man is apt to do after broken slumbers, and left his wife +still sleeping. He was not so eager for the poetic interests of the town +as he had been the night before; he even deferred his curiosity for +Heine's birth-house to the instructive conference which he had with his +waiter at breakfast. After all, was not it more important to know +something of the actual life of a simple common class of men than to +indulge a faded fancy for the memory of a genius, which no amount of +associations could feed again to its former bloom? The waiter said he +was a Nuremberger, and had learned English in London where he had served +a year for nothing. Afterwards, when he could speak three languages he +got a pound a week, which seemed low for so many, though not so low as +the one mark a day which he now received in Dusseldorf; in Berlin he paid +the hotel two marks a day. March confided to him his secret trouble as +to tips, and they tried vainly to enlighten each other as to what a just +tip was. + +He went to his banker's, and when he came back he found his wife with her +breakfast eaten, and so eager for the exploration of Heine's birthplace +that she heard with indifference of his failure to get any letters. It +was too soon to expect them, she said, and then she showed him her plan, +which she had been working out ever since she woke. It contained every +place which Heine had mentioned, and she was determined not one should +escape them. She examined him sharply upon his condition, accusing him +of having taken cold when he got up in the night, and acquitting him with +difficulty. She herself was perfectly well, but a little fagged, and +they must have a carriage. + +They set out in a lordly two-spanner, which took up half the little +Bolkerstrasse where Heine was born, when they stopped across the way from +his birthhouse, so that she might first take it all in from the outside +before they entered it. It is a simple street, and not the cleanest of +the streets in a town where most of them are rather dirty. Below the +houses are shops, and the first story of Heine's house is a butcher shop, +with sides of pork and mutton hanging in the windows; above, where the +Heine family must once have lived, a gold-beater and a frame-maker +displayed their signs. + +But did the Heine family really once live there? The house looked so +fresh and new that in spite of the tablet in its front affirming it the +poet's birthplace, they doubted; and they were not reassured by the +people who half halted as they passed, and stared at the strangers, so +anomalously interested in the place. They dismounted, and crossed to the +butcher shop where the provision man corroborated the tablet, but could +not understand their wish to go up stairs. He did not try to prevent +them, however, and they climbed to the first floor above, where a placard +on the door declared it private and implored them not to knock. Was this +the outcome of the inmate's despair from the intrusion of other pilgrims +who had wised to see the Heine dwelling-rooms? They durst not knock and +ask so much, and they sadly descended to the ground-floor, where they +found a butcher boy of much greater apparent intelligence than the +butcher himself, who told them that the building in front was as new as +it looked, and the house where Heine was really born was the old house in +the rear. He showed them this house, across a little court patched with +mangy grass and lilac-bushes; and when they wished to visit it he led the +way. The place was strewn both underfoot and overhead with feathers; it +had once been all a garden out to the street, the boy said, but from +these feathers, as well as the odor which prevailed, and the anxious +behavior of a few hens left in the high coop at one side, it was plain +that what remained of the garden was now a chicken slaughteryard. There +was one well-grown tree, and the boy said it was of the poet's time; but +when he let them into the house, he became vague as to the room where +Heine was born; it was certain only that it was somewhere upstairs and +that it could not be seen. The room where they stood was the frame- +maker's shop, and they bought of him a small frame for a memorial. They +bought of the butcher's boy, not so commercially, a branch of lilac; and +they came away, thinking how much amused Heine himself would have been +with their visit; how sadly, how merrily he would have mocked at their +effort to revere his birthplace. + +They were too old if not too wise to be daunted by their defeat, and they +drove next to the old court garden beside the Rhine where the poet says +he used to play with the little Veronika, and probably did not. At any +rate, the garden is gone; the Schloss was burned down long ago; and +nothing remains but a detached tower in which the good Elector Jan +Wilhelm, of Heine's time, amused himself with his many mechanical +inventions. The tower seemed to be in process of demolition, but an +intelligent workman who came down out of it, was interested in the +strangers' curiosity, and directed them to a place behind the Historical +Museum where they could find a bit of the old garden. It consisted of +two or three low trees, and under them the statue of the Elector by which +Heine sat with the little Veronika, if he really did. Afresh gale +blowing through the trees stirred the bushes that backed the statue, but +not the laurel wreathing the Elector's head, and meeting in a neat point +over his forehead. The laurel wreath is stone, like the rest of the +Elector, who stands there smirking in marble ermine and armor, and +resting his baton on the nose of a very small lion, who, in the +exigencies of foreshortening, obligingly goes to nothing but a tail under +the Elector's robe. + +This was a prince who loved himself in effigy so much that he raised an +equestrian statue to his own renown in the market-place, though he +modestly refused the credit of it, and ascribed its erection to the +affection of his subjects. You see him therein a full-bottomed wig, +mounted on a rampant charger with a tail as big round as a barrel, and +heavy enough to keep him from coming down on his fore legs as long as he +likes to hold them up. It was to this horse's back that Heine clambered +when a small boy, to see the French take formal possession of Dusseldorf; +and he clung to the waist of the bronze Elector, who had just abdicated, +while the burgomaster made a long speech, from the balcony of the +Rathhaus, and the Electoral arms were taken down from its doorway. + +The Rathhaus is a salad-dressing of German gothic and French rococo as to +its architectural style, and is charming in its way, but the Marches were +in the market-place for the sake of that moment of Heine's boyhood. They +felt that he might have been the boy who stopped as he ran before them, +and smacked the stomach of a large pumpkin lying at the feet of an old +market-woman, and then dashed away before she could frame a protest +against the indignity. From this incident they philosophized that the +boys of Dusseldorf are as mischievous at the end of the century as they +were at the beginning; and they felt the fascination that such a +bounteous, unkempt old marketplace must have for the boys of any period. +There were magnificent vegetables of all sorts in it, and if the fruits +were meagre that was the fault of the rainy summer, perhaps. The market- +place was very dirty, and so was the narrow street leading down from it +to the Rhine, which ran swift as a mountain torrent along a slatternly +quay. A bridge of boats crossing the stream shook in the rapid current, +and a long procession of market carts passed slowly over, while a cluster +of scows waited in picturesque patience for the draw to open. + +They saw what a beautiful town that was for a boy to grow up in, and how +many privileges it offered, how many dangers, how many chances for +hairbreadth escapes. They chose that Heine must often have rushed +shrieking joyfully down that foul alley to the Rhine with other boys; and +they easily found a leaf-strewn stretch of the sluggish Dussel, in the +Public Garden, where his playmate, the little Wilhelm, lost his life and +saved the kitten's. They were not so sure of the avenue through which +the poet saw the Emperor Napoleon come riding on his small white horse +when he took possession of the Elector's dominions. But if it was that +where the statue of the Kaiser Wilhelm I. comes riding on a horse led by +two Victories, both poet and hero are avenged there on the accomplished +fact. Defeated and humiliated France triumphs in the badness of that +foolish denkmal (one of the worst in all denkmal-ridden Germany), and the +memory of the singer whom the Hohenzollern family pride forbids honor in +his native place, is immortal in its presence. + +On the way back to their hotel, March made some reflections upon the open +neglect, throughout Germany, of the greatest German lyrist, by which the +poet might have profited if he had been present. He contended that it +was not altogether an effect of Hohenzollern pride, which could not +suffer a joke or two from the arch-humorist; but that Heine had said +things of Germany herself which Germans might well have found +unpardonable. He concluded that it would not do to be perfectly frank +with one's own country. Though, to be sure, there would always be the +question whether the Jew-born Heine had even a step-fatherland in the +Germany he loved so tenderly and mocked so pitilessly. He had to own +that if he were a negro poet he would not feel bound to measure terms in +speaking of America, and he would not feel that his fame was in her +keeping. + +Upon the whole he blamed Heine less than Germany and he accused her of +taking a shabby revenge, in trying to forget him; in the heat of his +resentment that there should be no record of Heine in the city where he +was born, March came near ignoring himself the fact that the poet +Freiligrath was also born there. As for the famous Dusseldorf school of +painting, which once filled the world with the worst art, he rejoiced +that it was now so dead, and he grudged the glance which the beauty of +the new Art Academy extorted from him. It is in the French taste, and is +so far a monument to the continuance in one sort of that French +supremacy, of which in another sort another denkmal celebrates the +overthrow. Dusseldorf is not content with the denkmal of the Kaiser on +horseback, with the two Victories for grooms; there is a second, which +the Marches found when they strolled out again late in the afternoon. It +is in the lovely park which lies in the heart of the city, and they felt +in its presence the only emotion of sympathy which the many patriotic +monuments of Germany awakened in them. It had dignity and repose, which +these never had elsewhere; but it was perhaps not so much for the dying +warrior and the pitying lion of the sculpture that their hearts were +moved as for the gentle and mournful humanity of the inscription, which +dropped into equivalent English verse in March's note-book: + + Fame was enough for the Victors, and glory and verdurous laurel; + Tears by their mothers wept founded this image of stone. + +To this they could forgive the vaunting record, on the reverse, of the +German soldiers who died heroes in the war with France, the war with +Austria, and even the war with poor little Denmark! + +The morning had been bright and warm, and it was just that the afternoon +should be dim and cold, with a pale sun looking through a September mist, +which seemed to deepen the seclusion and silence of the forest reaches; +for the park was really a forest of the German sort, as parks are apt to +be in Germany. But it was beautiful, and they strayed through it, and +sometimes sat down on the benches in its damp shadows, and said how much +seemed to be done in Germany for the people's comfort and pleasure. In +what was their own explicitly, as well as what was tacitly theirs, they +were not so restricted as we were at home, and especially the children +seemed made fondly and lovingly free of all public things. The Marches +met troops of them in the forest, as they strolled slowly back by the +winding Dussel to the gardened avenue leading to the park, and they found +them everywhere gay and joyful. But their elders seemed subdued, and +were silent. The strangers heard no sound of laughter in the streets of +Dusseldorf, and they saw no smiling except on the part of a very old +couple, whose meeting they witnessed and who grinned and cackled at each +other like two children as they shook hands. Perhaps they were indeed +children of that sad second childhood which one would rather not blossom +back into. + +In America, life is yet a joke with us, even when it is grotesque and +shameful, as it so often is; for we think we can make it right when we +choose. But there is no joking in Germany, between the first and second +childhoods, unless behind closed doors. Even there, people do not joke +above their breath about kings and emperors. If they joke about them in +print, they take out their laugh in jail, for the press laws are severely +enforced, and the prisons are full of able editors, serious as well as +comic. Lese-majesty is a crime that searches sinners out in every walk +of life, and it is said that in family jars a husband sometimes has the +last word of his wife by accusing her of blaspheming the sovereign, and +so having her silenced for three months at least behind penitential bars. + +"Think," said March, "how simply I could adjust any differences of +opinion between us in Dusseldorf." + +"Don't!" his wife implored with a burst of feeling which surprised him. +"I want to go home!" + +They had been talking over their day, and planning their journey to +Holland for the morrow, when it came to this outburst from her in the +last half-hour before bed which they sat prolonging beside their stove. + +"What! And not go to Holland? What is to become of my after-cure?" + +"Oh, it's too late for that, now. We've used up the month running about, +and tiring ourselves to death. I should like to rest a week--to get into +my berth on the Norumbia and rest!" + +"I guess the September gales would have something to say about that." + +"I would risk the September gales." + + + + +LXXII. + +In the morning March came home from his bankers gay with the day's +provisional sunshine in his heart, and joyously expectant of his wife's +pleasure in the letters he was bringing. There was one from each of +their children, and there was one from Fulkerson, which March opened and +read on the street, so as to intercept any unpleasant news there might be +in them; there were two letters for Mrs. March which he knew without +opening were from Miss Triscoe and Mrs. Adding respectively; Mrs. +Adding's, from the postmarks, seemed to have been following them about +for some time. + +"They're all right at home," he said. "Do see what those people have +been doing." + +"I believe," she said, taking a knife from the breakfast tray beside her +bed to cut the envelopes, "that you've really cared more about them all +along than I have." + +"No, I've only been anxious to be done with them." + +She got the letters open, and holding one of them up in each hand she +read them impartially and simultaneously; then she flung them both down, +and turned her face into her pillow with an impulse of her inalienable +girlishness. "Well, it is too silly." + +March felt authorized to take them up and read them consecutively; when +he had done, so he did not differ from his wife. In one case, Agatha had +written to her dear Mrs. March that she and Burnamy had just that evening +become engaged; Mrs. Adding, on her part owned a farther step, and +announced her marriage to Mr. Kenby. Following immemorial usage in such +matters Kenby had added a postscript affirming his happiness in unsparing +terms, and in Agatha's letter there was an avowal of like effect from +Burnamy. Agatha hinted her belief that her father would soon come to +regard Burnamy as she did; and Mrs. Adding professed a certain +humiliation in having realized that, after all her misgiving about him, +Rose seemed rather relieved than otherwise, as if he were glad to have +her off his hands. + +"Well," said March, "with these troublesome affairs settled, I don't see +what there is to keep us in Europe any longer, unless it's the consensus +of opinion in Tom, Bella, and Fulkerson, that we ought to stay the +winter." + +"Stay the winter!" Mrs. March rose from her pillow, and clutched the +home letters to her from the abeyance in which they had fallen on the +coverlet while she was dealing with the others. "What do you mean?" + +"It seems to have been prompted by a hint you let drop, which Tom has +passed to Bella and Fulkerson." + +"Oh, but that was before we left Carlsbad!" she protested, while she +devoured the letters with her eyes, and continued to denounce the +absurdity of the writers. Her son and daughter both urged that now their +father and mother were over there, they had better stay as long as they +enjoyed it, and that they certainly ought not to come home without going +to Italy, where they had first met, and revisiting the places which they +had seen together when they were young engaged people: without that their +silver wedding journey would not be complete. Her son said that +everything was going well with 'Every Other Week', and both himself and +Mr. Fulkerson thought his father ought to spend the winter in Italy, and +get a thorough rest. "Make a job of it, March," Fulkerson wrote, "and +have a Sabbatical year while you're at it. You may not get another." + +"Well, I can tell them," said Mrs. March indignantly, "we shall not do +anything of the kind." + +"Then you didn't mean it?" + +"Mean it!" She stopped herself with a look at her husband, and asked +gently, "Do you want to stay?" + +"Well, I don't know," he answered vaguely. The fact was, he was sick of +travel and of leisure; he was longing to be at home and at work again. +But if there was to be any self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, +at a bargain; which could be fairly divided between them, and leave him +the self and her the sacrifice, he was too experienced a husband not to +see the advantage of it, or to refuse the merit. "I thought you wished +to stay." + +"Yes," she sighed, "I did. It has been very, very pleasant, and, if +anything, I have over-enjoyed myself. We have gone romping through it +like two young people, haven't we?" + +"You have," he assented. "I have always felt the weight of my years in +getting the baggage registered; they have made the baggage weigh more +every time." + +"And I've forgotten mine. Yes, I have. But the years haven't forgotten +me, Basil, and now I remember them. I'm tired. It doesn't seem as if I +could ever get up. But I dare say it's only a mood; it may be only a +cold; and if you wish to stay, why--we will think it over." + +"No, we won't, my dear," he said, with a generous shame for his hypocrisy +if not with a pure generosity. "I've got all the good out of it that +there was in it, for me, and I shouldn't go home any better six months +hence than I should now. Italy will keep for another time, and so, for +the matter of that, will Holland." + +"No, no!" she interposed. "We won't give up Holland, whatever we do. +I couldn't go home feeling that I had kept you out of your after-cure; +and when we get there, no doubt the sea air will bring me up so that I +shall want to go to Italy, too, again. Though it seems so far off, now! +But go and see when the afternoon train for the Hague leaves, and I shall +be ready. My mind's quite made up on that point." + +"What a bundle of energy!" said her husband laughing down at her. + +He went and asked about the train to the Hague, but only to satisfy a +superficial conscience; for now he knew that they were both of one mind +about going home. He also looked up the trains for London, and found +that they could get there by way of Ostend in fourteen hours. Then he +went back to the banker's, and with the help of the Paris-New York +Chronicle which he found there, he got the sailings of the first steamers +home. After that he strolled about the streets for a last impression of +Dusseldorf, but it was rather blurred by the constantly recurring pull of +his thoughts toward America, and he ended by turning abruptly at a +certain corner, and going to his hotel. + +He found his wife dressed, but fallen again on her bed, beside which her +breakfast stood still untasted; her smile responded wanly to his +brightness. "I'm not well, my dear," she said. "I don't believe I could +get off to the Hague this afternoon." + +"Could you to Liverpool?" he returned. + +"To Liverpool?" she gasped. "What do you mean?" + +"Merely that the Cupania is sailing on the twentieth, and I've +telegraphed to know if we can get a room. I'm afraid it won't be a good +one, but she's the first boat out, and--" + +"No, indeed, we won't go to Liverpool, and we will never go home till +you've had your after-cure in Holland." She was very firm in this, but +she added, "We will stay another night, here, and go to the Hague +tomorrow. Sit down, and let us talk it over. Where were we?" + +She lay down on the sofa, and he put a shawl over her. "We were just +starting for Liverpool." + +"No, no we weren't! Don't say such things, dearest! I want you to help +me sum it all, up. You think it's been a success, don't you?" + +"As a cure?" + +"No, as a silver wedding journey?" + +"Perfectly howling." + +"I do think we've had a good time. I never expected to enjoy myself so +much again in the world. I didn't suppose I should ever take so much +interest in anything. It shows that when we choose to get out of our rut +we shall always find life as fresh and delightful as ever. There is +nothing to prevent our coming any year, now that Tom's shown himself so +capable, and having another silver wedding journey. I don't like to +think of it's being confined to Germany quite." + +"Oh, I don't know. We can always talk of it as our German-Silver Wedding +Journey." + +"That's true. But nobody would understand nowadays what you meant by +German-silver; it's perfectly gone out. How ugly it was! A sort of +greasy yellowish stuff, always getting worn through; I believe it was +made worn through. Aunt Mary had a castor of it, that I can remember +when I was a child; it went into the kitchen long before I grew up. +Would a joke like that console you for the loss of Italy?" + +"It would go far to do it. And as a German-Silver Wedding Journey, it's +certainly been very complete." + +"What do you mean?" + +"It's given us a representative variety of German cities. First we had +Hamburg, you know, a great modern commercial centre." + +"Yes! Go on!" + +"Then we had Leipsic, the academic." + +"Yes!" + +"Then Carlsbad, the supreme type of a German health resort; then +Nuremberg, the mediaeval; then Anspach, the extinct princely capital; +then Wurzburg, the ecclesiastical rococo; then Weimar, for the literature +of a great epoch; then imperial Berlin; then Frankfort, the memory of the +old free city; then Dusseldorf, the centre of the most poignant personal +interest in the world--I don't see how we could have done better, if we'd +planned it all, and not acted from successive impulses." + +"It's been grand; it's been perfect! As German-Silver Wedding Journey +it's perfect--it seems as if it had been ordered! But I will never let +you give up Holland! No, we will go this afternoon, and when I get to +Schevleningen, I'll go to bed, and stay there, till you've completed your +after-cure." + +"Do you think that will be wildly gay for the convalescent?" + +She suddenly began to cry. "Oh, dearest, what shall we do? I feel +perfectly broken down. I'm afraid I'm going to be sick--and away from +home! How could you ever let me overdo, so?" She put her handkerchief to +her eyes, and turned her face into the sofa pillow. + +This was rather hard upon him, whom her vivid energy and inextinguishable +interest had not permitted a moment's respite from pleasure since they +left Carlsbad. But he had been married, too long not to understand that +her blame of him was only a form of self-reproach for her own self- +forgetfulness. She had not remembered that she was no longer young till +she had come to what he saw was a nervous collapse. The fact had its +pathos and its poetry which no one could have felt more keenly than he. +If it also had its inconvenience and its danger he realized these too. + +"Isabel," he said, "we are going home." + +"Very well, then it will be your doing." + +"Quite. Do you think you could stand it as far as Cologne? We get the +sleeping-car there, and you can lie down the rest of the way to Ostend." + +"This afternoon? Why I'm perfectly strong; it's merely my nerves that +are gone." She sat up, and wiped her eyes. "But Basil! If you're doing +this for me--" + +"I'm doing it for myself," said March, as he went out of the room. + +She stood the journey perfectly well, and in the passage to Dover she +suffered so little from the rough weather that she was an example to many +robust matrons who filled the ladies' cabin with the noise of their +anguish during the night. She would have insisted upon taking the first +train up to London, if March had not represented that this would not +expedite the sailing of the Cupania, and that she might as well stay the +forenoon at the convenient railway hotel, and rest. It was not quite his +ideal of repose that the first people they saw in the coffee-room when +they went to breakfast should be Kenby and Rose Adding, who were having +their tea and toast and eggs together in the greatest apparent good- +fellowship. He saw his wife shrink back involuntarily from the +encounter, but this was only to gather force for it; and the next moment +she was upon them in all the joy of the surprise. Then March allowed +himself to be as glad as the others both seemed, and he shook hands with +Kenby while his wife kissed Rose; and they all talked at once. In the +confusion of tongues it was presently intelligible that Mrs. Kenby was +going to be down in a few minutes; and Kenby took March into his +confidence with a smile which was, almost a wink in explaining that he +knew how it was with the ladies. He said that Rose and he usually got +down to breakfast first, and when he had listened inattentively to Mrs. +March's apology for being on her way home, he told her that she was lucky +not to have gone to Schevleningen, where she and March would have frozen +to death. He said that they were going to spend September at a little +place on the English coast, near by, where he had been the day before +with Rose to look at lodgings, and where you could bathe all through the +month. He was not surprised that the Marches were going home, and said, +Well, that was their original plan, wasn't it? + +Mrs. Kenby, appearing upon this, pretended to know better, after the +outburst of joyful greeting with the Marches; and intelligently reminded +Kenby that he knew the Marches had intended to pass the winter in Paris. +She was looking extremely pretty, but she wished only to make them see +how well Rose was looking, and she put her arm round his shoulders as she +spoke, Schevleningen had done wonders for him, but it was fearfully cold +there, and now they were expecting everything from Westgate, where she +advised March to come, too, for his after-cure: she recollected in time +to say, She forgot they were on their way home. She added that she did +not know when she should return; she was merely a passenger, now; she +left everything to the men of the family. She had, in fact, the air of +having thrown off every responsibility, but in supremacy, not submission. +She was always ordering Kenby about; she sent him for her handkerchief, +and her rings which she had left either in the tray of her trunk, or on +the pin-cushion, or on the wash-stand or somewhere, and forbade him to +come back without them. He asked for her keys, and then with a joyful +scream she owned that she had left the door-key in the door and the whole +bunch of trunk-keys in her trunk; and Kenby treated it all as the +greatest joke; Rose, too, seemed to think that Kenby would make +everything come right, and he had lost that look of anxiety which he used +to have; at the most he showed a friendly sympathy for Kenby, for whose +sake he seemed mortified at her. He was unable to regard his mother as +the delightful joke which she appeared to Kenby, but that was merely +temperamental; and he was never distressed except when she behaved with +unreasonable caprice at Kenby's cost. + +As for Kenby himself he betrayed no dissatisfaction with his fate to +March. He perhaps no longer regarded his wife as that strong character +which he had sometimes wearied March by celebrating; but she was still +the most brilliant intelligence, and her charm seemed only to have grown +with his perception of its wilful limitations. He did not want to talk +about her so much; he wanted rather to talk about Rose, his health, his +education, his nature, and what was best to do for him. The two were on +terms of a confidence and affection which perpetually amused Mrs. Kenby, +but which left the sympathetic witness nothing to desire in their +relation. + +They all came to the train when the Marches started up to London, and +stood waving to them as they pulled out of the station. "Well, I can't +see but that's all right," he said as he sank back in his seat with a +sigh of relief. "I never supposed we should get out of their marriage +half so well, and I don't feel that you quite made the match either, my +dear." + +She was forced to agree with him that the Kenbys seemed happy together, +and that there was nothing to fear for Rose in their happiness. He would +be as tenderly cared for by Kenby as he could have been by his mother, +and far more judiciously. She owned that she had trembled for him till +she had seen them all together; and now she should never tremble again. + +"Well?" March prompted, at a certain inconclusiveness in her tone rather +than her words. + +"Well, you can see that it, isn't ideal." + +"Why isn't it ideal? I suppose you think that the marriage of Burnamy +and Agatha Triscoe will be ideal, with their ignorances and inexperiences +and illusions." + +"Yes! It's the illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them, and at +their age the Kenbys can't have them." + +"Kenby is a solid mass of illusion. And I believe that people can go and +get as many new illusions as they want, whenever they've lost their old +ones." + +"Yes, but the new illusions won't wear so well; and in marriage you want +illusions that will last. No; you needn't talk to me. It's all very +well, but it isn't ideal." + +March laughed. "Ideal! What is ideal?" + +"Going home!" she said with such passion that he had not the heart to +point out that they were merely returning to their old duties, cares and +pains, with the worn-out illusion that these would be altogether +different when they took them up again. + + + + +LXXIII. + +In fulfilment of another ideal Mrs. March took straightway to her berth +when she got on board the Cupania, and to her husband's admiration she +remained there till the day before they reached New York. Her theory was +that the complete rest would do more than anything else to calm her +shaken nerves; and she did not admit into her calculations the chances of +adverse weather which March would not suggest as probable in the last +week in September. The event justified her unconscious faith. The +ship's run was of unparalled swiftness, even for the Cupania, and of +unparalled smoothness. For days the sea was as sleek as oil; the racks +were never on the tables once; the voyage was of the sort which those who +make it no more believe in at the time than those whom they afterwards +weary in boasting of it. + +The ship was very full, but Mrs. March did not show the slightest +curiosity to know who her fellow-passengers were. She said that she +wished to be let perfectly alone, even by her own emotions, and for this +reason she forbade March to bring her a list of the passengers till after +they had left Queenstown lest it should be too exciting. He did not take +the trouble to look it up, therefore; and the first night out he saw no +one whom he knew at dinner; but the next morning at breakfast he found +himself to his great satisfaction at the same table with the Eltwins. +They were so much at ease with him that even Mrs. Eltwin took part in the +talk, and told him how they had spent the time of her husband's rigorous +after-cure in Switzerland, and now he was going home much better than +they had expected. She said they had rather thought of spending the +winter in Europe, but had given it up because they were both a little +homesick. March confessed that this was exactly the case with his wife +and himself; and he had to add that Mrs. March was not very well +otherwise, and he should be glad to be at home on her account. The +recurrence of the word home seemed to deepen Eltwin's habitual gloom, +and Mrs. Eltwin hastened to leave the subject of their return for inquiry +into Mrs. March's condition; her interest did not so far overcome her +shyness that she ventured to propose a visit to her; and March found that +the fact of the Eltwins' presence on board did not agitate his wife. +It seemed rather to comfort her, and she said she hoped he would see all +he could of the poor old things. She asked if he had met any one else he +knew, and he was able to tell her that there seemed to be a good many +swells on board, and this cheered her very much, though he did not know +them; she liked to be near the rose, though it was not a flower that she +really cared for. + +She did not ask who the swells were, and March took no trouble to find +out. He took no trouble to get a passenger-list, and he had the more +trouble when he tried at last; the lists seemed to have all vanished, as +they have a habit of doing, after the first day; the one that he made +interest for with the head steward was a second-hand copy, and had no one +he knew in it but the Eltwins. The social solitude, however, was rather +favorable to certain other impressions. There seemed even more elderly +people than there were on the Norumbia; the human atmosphere was gray and +sober; there was nothing of the gay expansion of the outward voyage; +there was little talking or laughing among those autumnal men who were +going seriously and anxiously home, with faces fiercely set for the +coming grapple; or necks meekly bowed for the yoke. They had eaten their +cake, and it had been good, but there remained a discomfort in the +digestion. They sat about in silence, and March fancied that the flown +summer was as dreamlike to each of them as it now was to him. He hated +to be of their dreary company, but spiritually he knew that he was of it; +and he vainly turned to cheer himself with the younger passengers. Some +matrons who went about clad in furs amused him, for they must have been +unpleasantly warm in their jackets and boas; nothing but the hope of +being able to tell the customs inspector with a good conscience that the +things had been worn, would have sustained one lady draped from head to +foot in Astrakhan. + +They were all getting themselves ready for the fray or the play of the +coming winter; but there seemed nothing joyous in the preparation. There +were many young girls, as there always are everywhere, but there were not +many young men, and such as there were kept to the smoking-room. There +was no sign of flirtation among them; he would have given much for a +moment of the pivotal girl, to see whether she could have brightened +those gloomy surfaces with her impartial lamp. March wished that he +could have brought some report from the outer world to cheer his wife, +as he descended to their state-room. They had taken what they could get +at the eleventh hour, and they had got no such ideal room as they had in +the Norumbia. It was, as Mrs. March graphically said, a basement room. +It was on the north side of the ship, which is a cold exposure, and if +there had been any sun it could not have got into their window, which was +half the time under water. The green waves, laced with foam, hissed as +they ran across the port; and the electric fan in the corridor moaned +like the wind in a gable. + +He felt a sinking of the heart as he pushed the state-room door open, and +looked at his wife lying with her face turned to the wall; and he was +going to withdraw, thinking her asleep, when she said quietly, "Are we +going down?" + +"Not that I know of," he answered with a gayety he did not feel. "But +I'll ask the head steward." + +She put out her hand behind her for him to take, and clutched his fingers +convulsively. "If I'm never any better, you will always remember this +happy, summer, won't you? Oh, it's been such a happy summer! It has +been one long joy, one continued triumph! But it was too late; we were +too old; and it's broken me." + +The time had been when he would have attempted comfort; when he would +have tried mocking; but that time was long past; he could only pray +inwardly for some sort of diversion, but what it was to be in their +barren circumstance he was obliged to leave altogether to Providence. +He ventured, pending an answer to his prayers upon the question, "Don't +you think I'd better see the doctor, and get you some sort of tonic?" + +She suddenly turned and faced him. "The doctor! Why, I'm not sick, +Basil! If you can see the purser and get our rooms changed, or do +something to stop those waves from slapping against that horrible +blinking one-eyed window, you can save my life; but no tonic is going to +help me." + +She turned her face from him again, and buried it in the bedclothes, +while he looked desperately at the racing waves, and the port that seemed +to open and shut like a weary eye. + +"Oh, go away!" she implored. "I shall be better presently, but if you +stand there like that--Go and see if you can't get some other room, +where I needn't feel as if I were drowning, all the way over." + +He obeyed, so far as to go away at once, and having once started, he did +not stop short of the purser's office. He made an excuse of getting +greenbacks for some English bank-notes, and then he said casually that he +supposed there would be no chance of having his room on the lower deck +changed for something a little less intimate with the sea. The purser +was not there to take the humorous view, but he conceived that March +wanted something higher up, and he was able to offer him a room of those +on the promenade where he had seen swells going in and out, for six +hundred dollars. March did not blench, but said he would get his wife to +look at it with him, and then he went out somewhat dizzily to take +counsel with himself how he should put the matter to her. She would be +sure to ask what the price of the new room would be, and he debated +whether to take it and tell her some kindly lie about it, or trust to the +bracing effect of the sum named in helping restore the lost balance of +her nerves. He was not so rich that he could throw six hundred dollars +away, but there might be worse things; and he walked up and down +thinking. All at once it flashed upon him that he had better see the +doctor, anyway, and find out whether there were not some last hope in +medicine before he took the desperate step before him. He turned in half +his course, and ran into a lady who had just emerged from the door of the +promenade laden with wraps, and who dropped them all and clutched him to +save herself from falling. + +"Why, Mr. March!" she shrieked. + +"Miss Triscoe!" he returned, in the astonishment which he shared with her +to the extent of letting the shawls he had knocked from her hold lie +between them till she began to pick them up herself. Then he joined her +and in the relief of their common occupation they contrived to possess +each other of the reason of their presence on, the same boat. She had +sorrowed over Mrs. March's sad state, and he had grieved to hear that her +father was going home because he was not at all well, before they found +the general stretched out in his steamer-chair, and waiting with a grim +impatience for his daughter. + +"But how is it you're not in the passenger-list?" he inquired of them +both, and Miss Triscoe explained that they had taken their passage at the +last moment, too late, she supposed, to get into the list. They were in +London, and had run down to Liverpool on the chance of getting berths. +Beyond this she was not definite, and there was an absence of Burnamy not +only from her company but from her conversation which mystified March +through all his selfish preoccupations with his wife. She was a girl who +had her reserves, but for a girl who had so lately and rapturously +written them of her engagement, there was a silence concerning her +betrothed that had almost positive quality. With his longing to try Miss +Triscoe upon Mrs. March's malady as a remedial agent, he had now the +desire to try Mrs. March upon Miss Triscoe's mystery as a solvent. She +stood talking to him, and refusing to sit down and be wrapped up in the +chair next her father. She said that if he were going to ask Mrs. March +to let her come to her, it would not be worth while to sit down; and he +hurried below. + +"Did you get it?" asked his wife, without looking round, but not so +apathetically as before. + +"Oh, yes. That's all right. But now, Isabel, there's something I've got +to tell you. You'd find it out, and you'd better know it at once." + +She turned her face, and asked sternly, "What is it?" + +Then he said, with, an almost equal severity, "Miss Triscoe is on board. +Miss Triscoe-and-her-father. She wishes to come down and see you." + +Mrs. March sat up and began to twist her hair into shape. "And Burnamy?" + +"There is no Burnamy physically, or so far as I can make out, +spiritually. She didn't mention him, and I talked at least five minutes +with her." + +"Hand me my dressing-sack," said Mrs. March, "and poke those things on +the sofa under the berth. Shut up that wash-stand, and pull the curtain +across that hideous window. Stop! Throw those towels into your berth. +Put my shoes, and your slippers into the shoe-bag on the door. Slip the +brushes into that other bag. Beat the dent out of the sofa cushion that +your head has made. Now!" + +"Then--then yon will see her?" + +"See her!" + +Her voice was so terrible that he fled before it, and he returned with +Miss Triscoe in a dreamlike simultaneity. He remembered, as he led the +way into his corridor, to apologize for bringing her down into a basement +room. + +"Oh, we're in the basement, too; it was all we could get," she said in +words that ended within the state-room he opened to her. Then he went +back and took her chair and wraps beside her father. + +He let the general himself lead the way up to his health, which he was +not slow in reaching, and was not quick in leaving. He reminded March of +the state he had seen him in at Wurzburg, and he said it had gone from +bad to worse with him. At Weimar he had taken to his bed and merely +escaped from it with his life. Then they had tried Schevleningen for a +week, where, he said in a tone of some injury, they had rather thought +they might find them, the Marches. The air had been poison to him, and +they had come over to England with some notion of Bournemouth; but the +doctor in London had thought not, and urged their going home. "All +Europe is damp, you know, and dark as a pocket in winter," he ended. + +There had been nothing about Burnamy, and March decided that he must wait +to see his wife if he wished to know anything, when the general, who had +been silent, twisted his head towards him, and said without regard to the +context, "It was complicated, at Weimar, by that young man in the most +devilish way. Did my daughter write to Mrs. March about--Well it came +to nothing, after all; and I don't understand how, to this day. I doubt +if they do. It was some sort of quarrel, I suppose. I wasn't consulted +in the matter either way. It appears that parents are not consulted in +these trifling affairs, nowadays." He had married his daughter's mother +in open defiance of her father; but in the glare of his daughter's +wilfulness this fact had whitened into pious obedience. "I dare say I +shall be told, by-and-by, and shall be expected to approve of the +result." + +A fancy possessed March that by operation of temperamental laws General +Triscoe was no more satisfied with Burnamy's final rejection than with +his acceptance. If the engagement was ever to be renewed, it might be +another thing; but as it stood, March divined a certain favor for the +young man in the general's attitude. But the affair was altogether too +delicate for comment; the general's aristocratic frankness in dealing +with it might have gone farther if his knowledge had been greater; but in +any case March did not see how he could touch it. He could only say, He +had always liked Burnamy, himself. + +He had his good qualities, the general owned. He did not profess to +understand the young men of our time; but certainly the fellow had the +instincts of a gentleman. He had nothing to say against him, unless in +that business with that man--what was his name? + +"Stoller?" March prompted. "I don't excuse him in that, but I don't +blame him so much, either. If punishment means atonement, he had the +opportunity of making that right very suddenly, and if pardon means +expunction, then I don't see why that offence hasn't been pretty well +wiped out. + +"Those things are not so simple as they used to seem," said the general, +with a seriousness beyond his wont in things that did not immediately +concern his own comfort or advantage. + + + + +LXXVI. + +In the mean time Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe were discussing another +offence of Burnamy's. + +"It wasn't," said the girl, excitedly, after a plunge through all the +minor facts to the heart of the matter, "that he hadn't a perfect right +to do it, if he thought I didn't care for him. I had refused him at +Carlsbad, and I had forbidden him to speak to me about--on the subject. +But that was merely temporary, and he ought to have known it. He ought to +have known that I couldn't accept him, on the spur of the moment, that +way; and when he had come back, after going away in disgrace, before he +had done anything to justify himself. I couldn't have kept my self- +respect; and as it was I had the greatest difficulty; and he ought to +have seen it. Of course he said afterwards that he didn't see it. But +when--when I found out that SHE had been in Weimar, and all that time, +while I had been suffering in Carlsbad and Wurzburg, and longing to see +him--let him know how I was really feeling--he was flirting with that-- +that girl, then I saw that he was a false nature, and I determined to put +an end to everything. And that is what I did; and I shall always think +I--did right--and--" + +The rest was lost in Agatha's handkerchief, which she put up to her eyes. +Mrs. March watched her from her pillow keeping the girl's unoccupied hand +in her own, and softly pressing it till the storm was past sufficiently +to allow her to be heard. + +Then she said, "Men are very strange--the best of them. And from the +very fact that he was disappointed, he would be all the more apt to rush +into a flirtation with somebody else." + +Miss Triscoe took down her handkerchief from a face that had certainly +not been beautified by grief. "I didn't blame him for the flirting; or +not so much. It was his keeping it from me afterwards. He ought to have +told me the very first instant we were engaged. But he didn't. He let +it go on, and if I hadn't happened on that bouquet I might never have +known anything about it. That is what I mean by--a false nature. +I wouldn't have minded his deceiving me; but to let me deceive myself-- +Oh, it was too much!" + +Agatha hid her face in her handkerchief again. She was perching on the +edge of the berth, and Mrs. March said, with a glance, which she did not +see, toward the sofa, "I'm afraid that's rather a hard seat for you. + +"Oh, no, thank you! I'm perfectly comfortable--I like it--if you don't +mind?" + +Mrs. March pressed her hand for answer, and after another little delay, +sighed and said, "They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are +more temporizing." + +"How do you mean?" Agatha unmasked again. + +"They can bear to keep things better than we can, and they trust to time +to bring them right, or to come right of themselves." + +"I don't think Mr. March would trust things to come right of themselves!" +said Agatha in indignant accusal of Mrs. March's sincerity. + +"Ah, that's just what he would do, my dear, and has done, all along; and +I don't believe we could have lived through without it: we should have +quarrelled ourselves into the grave!" + +"Mrs. March!" + +"Yes, indeed. I don't mean that he would ever deceive me. But he would +let things go on, and hope that somehow they would come right without any +fuss." + +"Do you mean that he would let anybody deceive themselves?" + +"I'm afraid he would--if he thought it would come right. It used to be a +terrible trial to me; and it is yet, at times when I don't remember that +he means nothing but good and kindness by it. Only the other day in +Ansbach--how long ago it seems!--he let a poor old woman give him her +son's address in Jersey City, and allowed her to believe he would look +him up when we got back and tell him we had seen her. I don't believe, +unless I keep right round after him, as we say in New England, that he'll +ever go near the man." + +Agatha looked daunted, but she said, "That is a very different thing." + +"It isn't a different kind of thing. And it shows what men are,--the +sweetest and best of them, that is. They are terribly apt to be +--easy-going." + +"Then you think I was all wrong?" the girl asked in a tremor. + +"No, indeed! You were right, because you really expected perfection of +him. You expected the ideal. And that's what makes all the trouble, in +married life: we expect too much of each other--we each expect more of +the other than we are willing to give or can give. If I had to begin +over again, I should not expect anything at all, and then I should be +sure of being radiantly happy. But all this talking and all this writing +about love seems to turn our brains; we know that men are not perfect, +even at our craziest, because women are not, but we expect perfection of +them; and they seem to expect it of us, poor things! If we could keep on +after we are in love just as we were before we were in love, and take +nice things as favors and surprises, as we did in the beginning! But we +get more and more greedy and exacting--" + +"Do you think I was too exacting in wanting him to tell me everything +after we were engaged?" + +"No, I don't say that. But suppose he had put it off till you were +married?" Agatha blushed a little, but not painfully, "Would it have +been so bad? Then you might have thought that his flirting up to the +last moment in his desperation was a very good joke. You would have +understood better just how it was, and it might even have made you fonder +of him. You might have seen that he had flirted with some one else +because he was so heart-broken about you." + +"Then you believe that if I could have waited till--till--but when I had +found out, don't you see I couldn't wait? It would have been all very +well if I hadn't known it till then. But as I did know it. Don't you +see?" + +"Yes, that certainly complicated it," Mrs. March admitted. "But I don't +think, if he'd been a false nature, he'd have owned up as he did. You +see, he didn't try to deny it; and that's a great point gained." + +"Yes, that is true," said Agatha, with conviction. "I saw that +afterwards. But you don't think, Mrs. March, that I was unjust or--or +hasty?" + +"No, indeed! You couldn't have done differently under the circumstances. +You may be sure he felt that--he is so unselfish and generous--" Agatha +began to weep into her handkerchief again; Mrs. March caressed her hand. +"And it will certainly come right if you feel as you do." + +"No," the girl protested. "He can never forgive me; it's all over, +everything is over. It would make very little difference to me, what +happened now--if the steamer broke her shaft, or anything. But if I can +only believe I wasn't unjust--" + +Mrs. March assured her once more that she had behaved with absolute +impartiality; and she proved to her by a process of reasoning quite +irrefragable that it was only a question of time, with which place had +nothing to do, when she and Burnamy should come together again, and all +should be made right between them. The fact that she did not know where +he was, any more than Mrs. March herself, had nothing to do with the +result; that was a mere detail, which would settle itself. She clinched +her argument by confessing that her own engagement had been broken off, +and that it had simply renewed itself. All you had to do was to keep +willing it, and waiting. There was something very mysterious in it. + +"And how long was it till--" Agatha faltered. + +"Well, in our ease it was two years." + +"Oh!" said the girl, but Mrs. March hastened to reassure her. + +"But our case was very peculiar. I could see afterwards that it needn't +have been two months, if I had been willing to acknowledge at once that I +was in the wrong. I waited till we met." + +"If I felt that I was in the wrong, I should write," said Agatha. +"I shouldn't care what he thought of my doing it." + +"Yes, the great thing is to make sure that you were wrong." + +They remained talking so long, that March and the general had exhausted +all the topics of common interest, and had even gone through those they +did not care for. At last the general said, "I'm afraid my daughter will +tire Mrs. March." + +"Oh, I don't think she'll tire my wife. But do you want her?" + +"Well, when you're going down." + +"I think I'll take a turn about the deck, and start my circulation," said +March, and he did so before he went below. + +He found his wife up and dressed, and waiting provisionally on the sofa. +"I thought I might as well go to lunch," she said, and then she told him +about Agatha and Burnamy, and the means she had employed to comfort and +encourage the girl. "And now, dearest, I want you to find out where +Burnamy is, and give him a hint. You will, won't you! If you could have +seen how unhappy she was!" + +"I don't think I should have cared, and I'm certainly not going to +meddle. I think Burnamy has got no more than he deserved, and that he's +well rid of her. I can't imagine a broken engagement that would more +completely meet my approval. As the case stands, they have my blessing." + +"Don't say that, dearest! You know you don't mean it." + +"I do; and I advise you to keep your hands off. You've done all and more +than you ought to propitiate Miss Triscoe. You've offered yourself up, +and you've offered me up--" + +"No, no, Basil! I merely used you as an illustration of what men were-- +the best of them." + +"And I can't observe," he continued, "that any one else has been +considered in the matter. Is Miss Triscoe the sole sufferer by Burnamy's +flirtation? What is the matter with a little compassion for the pivotal +girl?" + +"Now, you know you're not serious," said his wife; and though he would +not admit this, he could not be seriously sorry for the new interest +which she took in the affair. There was no longer any question of +changing their state-room. Under the tonic influence of the excitement +she did not go back to her berth after lunch, and she was up later after +dinner than he could have advised. She was absorbed in Agatha, but in +her liberation from her hypochondria, she began also to make a +comparative study of the American swells, in the light of her late +experience with the German highhotes. It is true that none of the swells +gave her the opportunity of examining them at close range, as the +highhotes had done. They kept to their, state-rooms mostly, where, after +he thought she could bear it, March told her how near he had come to +making her their equal by an outlay of six hundred dollars. She now +shuddered at the thought; but she contended that in their magnificent +exclusiveness they could give points to European princes; and that this +showed again how when Americans did try to do a thing, they beat the +world. Agatha Triscoe knew who they were, but she did not know them; +they belonged to another kind of set; she spoke of them as "rich people," +and she seemed content to keep away from them with Mrs. March and with +the shy, silent old wife of Major Eltwin, to whom March sometimes found +her talking. + +He never found her father talking with Major Eltwin. General Triscoe had +his own friends in the smoking-room, where he held forth in a certain +corner on the chances of the approaching election in New York, and mocked +their incredulity when he prophesied the success of Tammany and the +return of the King. March himself much preferred Major Eltwin to the +general and his friends; he lived back in the talk of the Ohioan into his +own younger years in Indiana, and he was amused and touched to find how +much the mid-Western life seemed still the same as he had known. The +conditions had changed, but not so much as they had changed in the East +and the farther West. The picture that the major drew of them in his own +region was alluring; it made March homesick; though he knew that he +should never go back to his native section. There was the comfort of +kind in the major; and he had a vein of philosophy, spare but sweet, +which March liked; he liked also the meekness which had come through +sorrow upon a spirit which had once been proud. + +They had both the elderly man's habit of early rising, and they usually +found themselves together waiting impatiently for the cup of coffee, +ingenuously bad, which they served on the Cupania not earlier than half +past six, in strict observance of a rule of the line discouraging to +people of their habits. March admired the vileness of the decoction, +which he said could not be got anywhere out of the British Empire, and he +asked Eltwin the first morning if he had noticed how instantly on the +Channel boat they had dropped to it and to the sour, heavy, sodden +British bread, from the spirited and airy Continental tradition of coffee +and rolls. + +The major confessed that he was no great hand to notice such things, and +he said he supposed that if the line had never lost a passenger, and got +you to New York in six days it had a right to feed you as it pleased; he +surmised that if they could get their airing outside before they took +their coffee, it would give the coffee a chance to taste better; and this +was what they afterwards did. They met, well buttoned and well mined up, +on the promenade when it was yet so early that they were not at once sure +of each other in the twilight, and watched the morning planets pale east +and west before the sun rose. Sometimes there were no paling planets and +no rising sun, and a black sea, ridged with white, tossed under a low +dark sky with dim rifts. + +One morning, they saw the sun rise with a serenity and majesty which it +rarely has outside of the theatre. The dawn began over that sea which +was like the rumpled canvas imitations of the sea on the stage, under +long mauve clouds bathed in solemn light. Above these, in the pale +tender sky, two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted across +them like a thin dusky veil. To the right a bank of dun cloud began to +burn crimson, and to burn brighter till it was like a low hill-side full +of gorgeous rugosities fleeced with a dense dwarfish growth of autumnal +shrubs. The whole eastern heaven softened and flushed through diaphanous +mists; the west remained a livid mystery. The eastern masses and flakes +of cloud began to kindle keenly; but the stars shone clearly, and then +one star, till the tawny pink hid it. All the zenith reddened, but still +the sun did not show except in the color of the brilliant clouds. At +last the lurid horizon began to burn like a flame-shot smoke, and a +fiercely bright disc edge pierced its level, and swiftly defined itself +as the sun's orb. + +Many thoughts went through March's mind; some of them were sad, but in +some there was a touch of hopefulness. It might have been that beauty +which consoled him for his years; somehow he felt himself, if no longer +young, a part of the young immortal frame of things. His state was +indefinable, but he longed to hint at it to his companion. + +"Yes," said Eltwin, with a long deep sigh. "I feel as if I could walk +out through that brightness and find her. I reckon that such hopes +wouldn't be allowed to lie to us; that so many ages of men couldn't have +fooled themselves so. I'm glad I've seen this." He was silent and they +both remained watching the rising sun till they could not bear its +splendor. "Now," said the major, "it must be time for that mud, as you +call it." Over their coffee and crackers at the end of the table which +they had to themselves, he resumed. "I was thinking all the time-- +we seem to think half a dozen things at once, and this was one of them-- +about a piece of business I've got to settle when I reach home; and +perhaps you can advise me about it; you're an editor. I've got a +newspaper on my hands; I reckon it would be a pretty good thing, if it +had a chance; but I don't know what to do with it: I got it in trade with +a fellow who has to go West for his lungs, but he's staying till I get +back. What's become of that young chap--what's his name?--that went out +with us?" + +"Burnamy?" prompted March, rather breathlessly. + +"Yes. Couldn't he take hold of it? I rather liked him. He's smart, +isn't he?" + +"Very," said March. "But I don't know where he is. I don't know that he +would go into the country--. But he might, if--" + +They entered provisionally into the case, and for argument's sake +supposed that Burnamy would take hold of the major's paper if he could be +got at. It really looked to March like a good chance for him, on +Eltwin's showing; but he was not confident of Burnamy's turning up very +soon, and he gave the major a pretty clear notion why, by entering into +the young fellow's history for the last three months. + +"Isn't it the very irony of fate?" he said to his wife when he found her +in their room with a cup of the same mud he had been drinking, and +reported the facts to her. + +"Irony?" she said, with all the excitement he could have imagined or +desired. "Nothing of the kind. It's a leading, if ever there was one. +It will be the easiest thing in the world to find Burnamy. And out there +she can sit on her steps!" + +He slowly groped his way to her meaning, through the hypothesis of +Burnamy's reconciliation and marriage with Agatha Triscoe, and their +settlement in Major Eltwin's town under social conditions that implied a +habit of spending the summer evenings on their front porch. While he was +doing this she showered him with questions and conjectures and +requisitions in which nothing but the impossibility of going ashore saved +him from the instant devotion of all his energies to a world-wide, +inquiry into Burnamy's whereabouts. + +The next morning he was up before Major Eltwin got out, and found the +second-cabin passengers free of the first-cabin promenade at an hour when +their superiors were not using it. As he watched these inferiors, +decent-looking, well-clad men and women, enjoying their privilege with a +furtive air, and with stolen glances at him, he asked himself in what +sort he was their superior, till the inquiry grew painful. Then he rose +from his chair, and made his way to the place where the material barrier +between them was lifted, and interested himself in a few of them who +seemed too proud to avail themselves of his society on the terms made. +A figure seized his attention with a sudden fascination of conjecture and +rejection: the figure of a tall young man who came out on the promenade +and without looking round, walked swiftly away to the bow of the ship, +and stood there, looking down at the water in an attitude which was +bewilderingly familiar. His movement, his posture, his dress, even, was +that of Burnamy, and March, after a first flush of pleasure, felt a +sickening repulsion in the notion of his presence. It would have been +such a cheap performance on the part of life, which has all sorts of +chances at command, and need not descend to the poor tricks of second- +rate fiction; and he accused Burnamy of a complicity in the bad taste of +the affair, though he realized, when he reflected, that if it were really +Burnamy he must have sailed in as much unconsciousness of the Triscoes as +he himself had done. He had probably got out of money and had hurried +home while he had still enough to pay the second-cabin fare on the first +boat back. Clearly he was not to blame, but life was to blame for such a +shabby device; and March felt this so keenly that he wished to turn from +the situation, and have nothing to do with it. He kept moving toward +him, drawn by the fatal attraction, and at a few paces' distance the +young man whirled about and showed him the face of a stranger. + +March made some witless remark on the rapid course of the ship as it cut +its way through the water of the bow; the stranger answered with a strong +Lancashire accent; and in the talk which followed, he said he was going +out to see the cotton-mills at Fall River and New Bedford, and he seemed +hopeful of some advice or information from March; then he said he must go +and try to get his Missus out; March understood him to mean his wife, and +he hurried down to his own, to whom he related his hair-breadth escape +from Burnamy. + +"I don't call it an escape at all!" she declared. "I call it the +greatest possible misfortune. If it had been Burnamy we could have +brought them together at once, just when she has seen so clearly that she +was in the wrong, and is feeling all broken up. There wouldn't have been +any difficulty about his being in the second-cabin. We could have +contrived to have them meet somehow. If the worst came to the worst you +could have lent him money to pay the difference, and got him into the +first-cabin." + +"I could have taken that six-hundred-dollar room for him," said March, +"and then he could have eaten with the swells." + +She answered that now he was teasing; that he was fundamentally incapable +of taking anything seriously; and in the end he retired before the +stewardess bringing her first coffee, with a well-merited feeling that if +it had not been for his triviality the young Lancashireman would really +have been Burnamy. + + + + +LXXV. + +Except for the first day and night out from Queenstown, when the ship +rolled and pitched with straining and squeaking noises, and a thumping of +the lifted screws, there was no rough weather, and at last the ocean was +livid and oily, with a long swell, on which she swayed with no +perceptible motion save from her machinery. + +Most of the seamanship seemed to be done after dark, or in those early +hours when March found the stewards cleaning the stairs, and the sailors +scouring the promenades. He made little acquaintance with his fellow- +passengers. One morning he almost spoke with an old Quaker lady whom he +joined in looking at the Niagara flood which poured from the churning +screws; but he did not quite get the words out. On the contrary he +talked freely with an American who, bred horses on a farm near Boulogne, +and was going home to the Horse Show; he had been thirty-five years out +of the country, but he had preserved his Yankee accent in all its purity, +and was the most typical-looking American on board. Now and then March +walked up and down with a blond Mexican whom he found of the usual well- +ordered Latin intelligence, but rather flavorless; at times he sat beside +a nice Jew, who talked agreeably, but only about business; and he +philosophized the race as so tiresome often because it seemed so often +without philosophy. He made desperate attempts at times to interest +himself in the pool-selling in the smoking-room where the betting on the +ship's wonderful run was continual. + +He thought that people talked less and less as they drew nearer home; but +on the last day out there was a sudden expansion, and some whom he had +not spoken with voluntarily addressed him. The sweet, soft air was like +midsummer the water rippled gently, without a swell, blue under the clear +sky, and the ship left a wide track that was silver in the sun. There +were more sail; the first and second class baggage was got up and piled +along the steerage deck. + +Some people dressed a little more than usual for the last dinner which +was earlier than usual, so as to be out of the way against the arrival +which had been variously predicted at from five to seven-thirty. An +indescribable nervousness culminated with the appearance of the customs +officers on board, who spread their papers on cleared spaces of the +dining-tables, and summoned the passengers to declare that they had +nothing to declare, as a preliminary to being searched like thieves at +the dock. + +This ceremony proceeded while the Cupania made her way up the Narrows, +and into the North River, where the flare of lights from the crazy steeps +and cliffs of architecture on the New York shore seemed a persistence of +the last Fourth of July pyrotechnics. March blushed for the grotesque +splendor of the spectacle, and was confounded to find some Englishmen +admiring it, till he remembered that aesthetics were not the strong point +of our race. His wife sat hand in hand with Miss Triscoe, and from time +to time made him count the pieces of small baggage in the keeping of +their steward; while General Triscoe held aloof in a sarcastic calm. + +The steamer groped into her dock; the gangways were lifted to her side; +the passengers fumbled and stumbled down their incline, and at the bottom +the Marches found themselves respectively in the arms of their son and +daughter. They all began talking at once, and ignoring and trying to +remember the Triscoes to whom the young Marches were presented. Bella +did her best to be polite to Agatha, and Tom offered to get an inspector +for the general at the same time as for his father. Then March, +remorsefully remembered the Eltwins, and looked about for them, so that +his son might get them an inspector too. He found the major already in +the hands of an inspector, who was passing all his pieces after +carelessly looking into one: the official who received the declarations +on board had noted a Grand Army button like his own in the major's lapel, +and had marked his fellow-veteran's paper with the mystic sign which +procures for the bearer the honor of being promptly treated as a +smuggler, while the less favored have to wait longer for this indignity +at the hands of their government. When March's own inspector came he was +as civil and lenient as our hateful law allows; when he had finished +March tried to put a bank-note in his hand, and was brought to a just +shame by his refusal of it. The bed-room steward keeping guard over the +baggage helped put-it together after the search, and protested that March +had feed him so handsomely that he would stay there with it as long as +they wished. This partly restored March's self-respect, and he could +share in General Triscoe's indignation with the Treasury ruling which +obliged him to pay duty on his own purchases in excess of the hundred- +dollar limit, though his daughter had brought nothing, and they jointly +came far within the limit for two. + +He found that the Triscoes were going to a quiet old hotel on the way to +Stuyvesant Square, quite in his own neighborhood, and he quickly arranged +for all the ladies and the general to drive together while he was to +follow with his son on foot and by car. They got away from the scene of +the customs' havoc while the steamer shed, with its vast darkness dimly +lit by its many lamps, still showed like a battle-field where the +inspectors groped among the scattered baggage like details from the +victorious army searching for the wounded. His son clapped him on the +shoulder when he suggested this notion, and said he was the same old +father; and they got home as gayly together as the dispiriting influences +of the New York ugliness would permit. It was still in those good and +decent times, now so remote, when the city got something for the money +paid out to keep its streets clean, and those they passed through were +not foul but merely mean. + +The ignoble effect culminated when they came into Broadway, and found its +sidewalks, at an hour when those of any European metropolis would have +been brilliant with life, as unpeopled as those of a minor country town, +while long processions of cable-cars carted heaps of men and women up and +down the thoroughfare amidst the deformities of the architecture. + +The next morning the March family breakfasted late after an evening +prolonged beyond midnight in spite of half-hourly agreements that now +they must really all go to bed. The children had both to recognize again +and again how well their parents were looking; Tom had to tell his father +about the condition of 'Every Other Week'; Bella had to explain to her +mother how sorry her husband was that he could not come on to meet them +with her, but was coming a week later to take her home, and then she +would know the reason why they could not all, go back to Chicago with +him: it was just the place for her father to live, for everybody to live. +At breakfast she renewed the reasoning with which she had maintained her +position the night before; the travellers entered into a full expression +of their joy at being home again; March asked what had become of that +stray parrot which they had left in the tree-top the morning they +started; and Mrs. March declared that this was the last Silver Wedding +Journey she ever wished to take, and tried to convince them all that she +had been on the verge of nervous collapse when she reached the ship. +They sat at table till she discovered that it was very nearly eleven +o'clock, and said it was disgraceful. + +Before they rose, there was a ring at the door, and a card was brought in +to Tom. He glanced at it, and said to his father, "Oh, yes! This man +has been haunting the office for the last three days. He's got to leave +to-day, and as it seemed to be rather a case of life and death with him, +I said he'd probably find you here this morning. But if you don't want +to see him, I can put him off till afternoon, I suppose." + +He tossed the card to his father, who looked at it quietly, and then gave +it to his wife. "Perhaps I'd as well see him?" + +"See him!" she returned in accents in which all the intensity of her soul +was centred. By an effort of self-control which no words can convey a +just sense of she remained with her children, while her husband with a +laugh more teasing than can be imagined went into the drawing-room to +meet Burnamy. + +The poor fellow was in an effect of belated summer as to clothes, and he +looked not merely haggard but shabby. He made an effort for dignity as +well as gayety, however, in stating himself to March, with many apologies +for his persistency. But, he said, he was on his way West, and he was +anxious to know whether there was any chance of his 'Kasper Hauler' paper +being taken if he finished it up. March would have been a far harder- +hearted editor than he was, if he could have discouraged the suppliant +before him. He said he would take the Kasper Hauler paper and add a band +of music to the usual rate of ten dollars a thousand words. Then +Burnamy's dignity gave way, if not his gayety; he began to laugh, and +suddenly he broke down and confessed that he had come home in the +steerage; and was at his last cent, beyond his fare to Chicago. His +straw hat looked like a withered leaf in the light of his sad facts; his +thin overcoat affected March's imagination as something like the +diaphanous cast shell of a locust, hopelessly resumed for comfort at the +approach of autumn. He made Burnamy sit down, after he had once risen, +and he told him of Major Eltwin's wish to see him; and he promised to go +round with him to the major's hotel before the Eltwins left town that +afternoon. + +While he prolonged the interview in this way, Mrs. March was kept from +breaking in upon them only by the psychical experiment which she was +making with the help and sympathy of her daughter at the window of the +dining-room which looked up Sixteenth Street. At the first hint she gave +of the emotional situation which Burnamy was a main part of, her son; +with the brutal contempt of young men for other young men's love affairs, +said he must go to the office; he bade his mother tell his father there +was no need of his coming down that day, and he left the two women +together. This gave the mother a chance to develop the whole fact to the +daughter with telegrammic rapidity and brevity, and then to enrich the +first-outline with innumerable details, while they both remained at the +window, and Mrs. March said at two-minutely intervals, with no sense of +iteration for either of them, "I told her to come in the morning, if she +felt like it, and I know she will. But if she doesn't, I shall say there +is nothing in fate, or Providence either. At any rate I'm going to stay +here and keep longing for her, and we'll see whether there's anything in +that silly theory of your father's. I don't believe there is," she said, +to be on the safe side. + +Even when she saw Agatha Triscoe enter the park gate on Rutherford Place, +she saved herself from disappointment by declaring that she was not +coming across to their house. As the girl persisted in coming and +coming, and at last came so near that she caught sight of Mrs. March at +the window and nodded, the mother turned ungratefully upon her daughter, +and drove her away to her own room, so that no society detail should +hinder the divine chance. She went to the door herself when Agatha rang, +and then she was going to open the way into the parlor where March was +still closeted with Burnamy, and pretend that she had not known they were +there. But a soberer second thought than this prevailed, and she told +the girl who it was that was within and explained the accident of his +presence. "I think," she said nobly, "that you ought to have the chance +of going away if you don't wish to meet him." + +The girl, with that heroic precipitation which Mrs. March had noted in +her from the first with regard to what she wanted to do, when Burnamy was +in question, answered, "But I do wish to meet him, Mrs. March." + +While they stood looking at each other, March came out to ask his wife if +she would see Burnamy, and she permitted herself so much stratagem as to +substitute Agatha, after catching her husband aside and subduing his +proposed greeting of the girl to a hasty handshake. + +Half an hour later she thought it time to join the young people, urged +largely by the frantic interest of her daughter. But she returned from +the half-open door without entering. "I couldn't bring myself to break +in on the poor things. They are standing at the window together looking +over at St. George's." + +Bella silently clasped her hands. March gave cynical laugh, and said, +"Well we are in for it, my dear." Then he added, "I hope they'll take us +with them on their Silver Wedding Journey." + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Declare that they had nothing to declare +Despair which any perfection inspires +Disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love +Fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously +Held aloof in a sarcastic calm +Illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them +Married life: we expect too much of each other +Not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country +Offence which any difference of taste was apt to give him +Passionate desire for excess in a bad thing +Puddles of the paths were drying up with the haste +Race seemed so often without philosophy +Self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, at a bargain +She always came to his defence when he accused himself + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Their Silver Wedding Journey, v3 +by William Dean Howells + + + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY, COMPLETE: + +Americans are hungrier for royalty than anybody else +Bad wars, or what are comically called good wars +Calm of those who have logic on their side +Decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance +Declare that they had nothing to declare +Despair which any perfection inspires +Disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love +Effort to get on common ground with an inferior +Explained perhaps too fully +Fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously +Futility of travel +He buys my poverty and not my will +Held aloof in a sarcastic calm +Honest selfishness +Humanity may at last prevail over nationality +Illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them +Impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much +Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate +Less intrusive than if he had not been there +Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of +Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous +Life of the ship, like the life of the sea: a sodden monotony +Madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel +Married life: we expect too much of each other +Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign +Night so bad that it was worse than no night at all +Not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country +Offence which any difference of taste was apt to give him +Only one of them was to be desperate at a time +Our age caricatures our youth +Passionate desire for excess in a bad thing +Prices fixed by his remorse +Puddles of the paths were drying up with the haste +Race seemed so often without philosophy +Recipes for dishes and diseases +Reckless and culpable optimism +Reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last +Repeated the nothings they had said already +Self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, at a bargain +She cares for him: that she was so cold shows that +She could bear his sympathy, but not its expression +She always came to his defence when he accused himself +Suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism +They were so near in age, though they were ten years apart +Unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine +Voting-cattle whom they bought and sold +We don't seem so much our own property +We get too much into the hands of other people +Wilful sufferers +Woman harnessed with a dog to a cart +Wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests +Work he was so fond of and so weary of + + +[The End] + + + + + +*********************************************************************** +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Their Silver Wedding Journey, by Howells +********This file should be named wh4sw10.txt or wh4sw10.zip*********** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, wh4sw11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, wh4sw10a.txt + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + +More information about this book is at the top of this file. + +We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. 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