Villa Elsa Part 22

"Where are you going to carry it, then?" pursued the other, handing back the ribboned paper.

"Would you think my grip would be the place?"

"Your grip? Yes, that's just like me. I always shove everything into my grip at last. See here, now. I have none of my papers about me.

All in my grip--even in the house." Rudi opened to view his inside coat pocket in testimony, as if he were an important individual.

Gard s.h.i.+fted ground again.

"I don't know. I may carry it in my pocket--with my ticket. What if I leave it in my trunk after all? I shall have to open up at the border anyhow."

The subject of the pa.s.sport kept in Rudi's mind. Three days later he called out to Gard:

"I have been thinking it over and I believe you should carry your pa.s.sport in your grip. It may slip out of your pocket while you are dozing in the train."

"Danke schoen!" said Gard.

The parents also took great interest in the matter. The paper ought to be examined by the German authorities. Was it not Herr Kirtley's credentials to the German nation? Nothing would answer but that Herr Bucher and Rudolph should take it in town and see that the proper officials were duly cognizant. It was another evidence to Gard that a Teuton is not content until his Government is given an opportunity to approve. The doc.u.ment seemed so vital to Villa Elsa that Gard mentioned it to Anderson in the way of gossip.

"Don't leave it in your trunk or grip," cautioned the elder. "Keep it on your person. Sew it on your s.h.i.+rt, by golly. One never needs a pa.s.sport, you know, and then you need it like the devil. I've heard of two or three persons this month who got separated from their pa.s.sports and were in trouble. Something seems to be really going on under the surface. But spring is the cla.s.sic time for war as well as love to break out."

Gard decided to follow Anderson's advice and keep the parchment in his innermost pocket. He also checked his trunk through to the frontier, contrary to Rudi's suggestion. He said nothing of these changes, yet he was far from thinking that the hand of the Goth would dare to reach out after him--a friendly foreigner and guest leaving this peaceful hearthstone, so effusive in its amicable leave-takings.

Just before his departure he felt something of a restraint in the household. He attributed it to the social stiffness of the German.

This increases when intercourse comes to a point. Affecting moments jolt hard in him--moments when embarra.s.sment is natural to all humans.

At the gate, for the last time, the Herr was energetically smoking his long pipe. The Frau frequently wiped her sweating face with a handkerchief. The boys kept kicking away the dogs whose barking half drowned the parting words. Gard said good-by, too, to the old linden by his window. How one can miss a tree!

And Elsa! He flattered himself she looked a mite regretful that he was going. She was starting for her cla.s.s when she joined the topsy-turvy group by the gate and waved her creamy hand. Her small straw hat, wreathed fatiguingly in roses, clung desperately to her head in the awkward way German women have of wearing headgear, and made her, despite her blossom-like attractiveness, seem quaint and so truly German like the rest. She looked to Gard as pink and blonde as the year before when he had first been dazzled by her glistening hair.

On crossing the river he could see her moving down their meadow path where Heine had sung to him, her etching materials under her arm.

One last look at the row of knightly castles r.i.m.m.i.n.g the heights above her and at the storied Elbe at her feet as she hurried along!

He gulped down a small something in his throat, and turned his face toward the station.

After all, Dresden had been a year of his life.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

A JOURNEY

At Eisenach, bound for Frankfort, the train guard punched Kirtley's ticket and showed him into a compartment that was empty save for a military figure engaged in reading a large newspaper, holding it firmly with gloved hands before his face. Although the day was warm, an army cap was clapped down low on the head.

Gard sank back on the cus.h.i.+ons and closed his eyes. He was somewhat fatigued from having climbed the Wartburg whose castle, famed in the history of Luther, lay asleep there like a long and oddly shaped beetle. He soon fell into a doze. When he became conscious again, his companion's countenance was buried as before in the paper.

Underneath it, gray trousers and large boots protruded in Kirtley's direction as if to ward off any familiar approach.

That editorial page must be extensive and absorbing, Kirtley commented to himself as he whiffed the refres.h.i.+ng breeze that came in his window from Hesse close by on the west. In a delicious half-dreaminess he thought the stranger turned the journal and that a reddish, be-whiskered visage, with a flat, wide-lobed nose, popped into view for a second.

The motionless reading, nevertheless, continued for the remainder of the trip. To the sweet July zephyr and the snug landscapes flitting by, the soldier paid no heed. How German this was!--Kirtley mused.

The Teutons are a wintry race and often take their summer joys in a hard, hyperborean fas.h.i.+on. He could not but admire this example of physical constraint. The iron rigors of Prussian drill had made the best army in the world.

Or perhaps this was some queer, abnormal chap. Gard remembered fragments of stories he had heard of comic or tragic happenings in the separated, locked compartments of continental trains. But the tales were too vague in his mind to pique any anxiety. He roused himself and took up his German newspaper. m.u.f.fled war scares. Always war scares more or less in evidence. How dull the Teuton journals would be without them! Dog days were coming and brains were no doubt effervescing.

The forty-eight hours in the rich old capital on the Main were full and Kirtley had almost forgotten his peculiar fellow traveler from Eisenach. What was his amazement, after his guard had punched his transportation and closed him into his compartment in the train for Heidelberg, to find the same individual seated alone again in the corner, engrossed in his voluminous and stationary paper!

This began to be disturbing. Gard was not more brave than the average mortal, but fear had not really been born into his bones.

Was this some weird affair? Was it a spy at work, combining German earnestness with German farcicalness? The ludicrous extremes of Jim Deming's experience flashed over Kirtley's mind. But he felt as full confidence in his innocence as had Jim, and he had not given a Cinderella party.

It was a short run to the celebrated university town on the Neckar through ancient Hesse. What would Gard do? This was a nonsensical situation. He decided to crack it open, find out what it was all about. He summoned his best German and formally addressed a casual remark to the stranger. No answer. He did not hear.

"Oh, deaf! Probably dumb too!" Gard exclaimed to himself. His next move was to step across to the other window for the evident purpose of throwing out something. A lurch of the train caused him to stumble against the high boots. They remained motionless. He discovered that the eyes behind the paper were fixed in a stare.

_It was a stuffed figure!_

A mere puppet. And yet a thrill of alarm, for the first time, shot through Gard. It was not rea.s.suring. He thought of Rudi. Was this some official prank young Bucher had set going? It would be like him. He must be a spy, as Anderson had insisted. Was the son trying to act with confederates far away over here near the Rhine?

The pa.s.sport! Rudi and the family knew all about it. Kirtley felt in his inside s.h.i.+rt pocket. He was relieved to find the parchment still there. How foolish he would have been to leave it in his grip, as Rudi had urged! A traveler couldn't be with his grip every moment.

But why was such a paper considered valuable by the Secret Service?

As he returned to his seat, Kirtley gave the legs a kick "just for luck." He could not help laughing. The burlesque! The Germans were certainly a curious people. This was like some fantastic tale of Hoffmann with its marionettes and other childish stuff so dear to the race.

It came over him that this image was thus being conveniently transported from one town to another for some show--some Jarley waxworks. But how, then, about that other form in the train from Eisenach? It had certainly been alive. Had he not seen it turn its paper? Yet, was he sure? He had been half asleep and might have imagined it.

As he revolved the matter in his mind, he was less and less positive. At any rate, how explain the fact that this exact figure had been on the two trains and that each time he had been with it alone? How was it known here what trains he would take? Only the Buchers were advised.

Whether a silly hoax or a performance of the tremendous sleuth system of Germany, Gard was too unsettled to enjoy fully his brief sojourn at Heidelberg. He decided to trip up any pursuers. Instead of resuming by rail his journey to Mannheim, according to that section of his ticket, he took an auto. For every reason that would be pleasanter. He could see to better advantage the far-famed, vine-clad valley of the Neckar where it merges into the wide and n.o.ble plains of the Rhine.

From Mannheim he went by boat as proposed. His be-whiskered friend did not put in an appearance and Kirtley congratulated himself on the riddance. The more he reflected, the less he made any sense out of it. Coincidence, practical joke, spy system at white heat, hallucination--all suggestions seemed equally untenable.

At Cologne he found the newspapers full of discussions about war. On the trip he had not read much. He was either sight-seeing, traveling, weary or sleepy. For that matter, the public generally was not aware that fearful hostilities were imminent, and he gave the subject no keen notice.

There is not much to view in the city of odors--Coleridge's city of "two and seventy" smells. Only the cathedral. Although the museum is mediocre Gard dropped in there at noon to fill in his time. After wandering about he became aware that there was, in the distance, another visitor whose occasional shuffling footsteps first attracted his attention among the eye-obstructing objects. Then he saw, at times, a bulky form bending over some curiosity and contemplating it.

As Kirtley had no companion on his journey, except the military scarecrow, he felt a touch of lonesomeness and was glad when he gradually approached near enough to see that this person was a kindly looking German who had the wondering air of a sight-seer. In their leisurely itineraries they at last met in front of a small bronze copy of a Roman horse marked with italics in Gard's guide book.

The other looked, too, as if he wanted to speak, and his cheerful countenance invited Kirtley's readiness to visit with someone. The stranger was in appearance a prosperous man of about thirty-five, blond, with a very small curling mustache under a small nose. Though he kept smiling he still said nothing, as if doubtful of a first advance.

Gard hesitated, then broke the ice.

"I don't know anything about Roman horses," he essayed. "I can't tell whether this is a good thing or not." The other was affably relieved and was soon pouring out information about the animal.

"Excuse me," he ventured, "but I raise horses on my estate and I know a little about them. The Roman horse was, of course, smaller, shorter, stockier, than our modern type. Small heads, short necks, built closer to the ground. Just like the Roman himself. This is a splendid example."

Seeing that Gard followed him he began again with:

"Excuse me." And he plunged into a minute, quite exhaustive, discussion of the Latin specimen before them, as they walked round and round to view it from all angles. Kirtley had never before realized there were so many points--fine points--about this familiar quadruped. The German showed why this animal could not speed, could not make nearly as many miles a day as his present successor. But, like the Roman, he had endurance and he was undoubtedly easier to handle. There were the withers, the haunch, the hock, and a score of other features upon which Gard's new acquaintance held forth, introducing almost every remark with his rather embarra.s.sed "excuse me."

The astonis.h.i.+ng Teuton erudition again! Gard had to marvel at it once more. This German was, by rare exception, ingratiating. They finally introduced themselves. Herr Furstenheimer of Wuerttemberg--a farmer. Gard concluded he did not dislike Germans of the south.