The white bulldog Bébé for nine years had lived with them, sharing their lives. He ate sitting on the floor beside the table, taking food from their hands. He had slept at their feet when he was a helpless crying puppy afraid of the dark and missing the comfort of his mother’s milk. Professor Hutten admitted in his heart that he was fond of Bébé, in fact with his wife he loved Bébé warmly and tenderly and constantly, in spite of the trouble he gave them. To them, there was nothing absurd in their feelings; Bébé, of a nobly disinterested nature, deserved their care and repaid them with devotion. His wife was cut to the bone, he could see in her face, by the jeers and laughter of the particularly base kind of Spaniards on the boat. Professor Hutten shared her grief, mixed with indignation and it must be said a touch of shame. He did not feel it was unmanly of him to have held Bébé’s head, but it was careless of him not to have a proper regard for appearances, and to have exposed himself to the ridicule of those coarse-natured persons. It was a consolation to remember that Bébé was an English bulldog of champion stock, of distinguished if not absolutely flawless ancestry; he had been awarded blue and purple ribbons without number in very creditable shows. Now he was a trifle aged perhaps and out of training, but he was still able and willing to defend his master and mistress and incidentally himself against all attacks. If the word was said to him it was still in Bébé to spring like a trigger, seize and hold one of those jeering little black people by the throat, never letting go until his master gave the command. Professor Hutten leaned over the sleeping Bébé and said in a low, urgent voice, “Attack, Bébé, attack!”
Bébé rose drunkenly, scrambled on his feet trying to get a balance, his eyes rolling. He uttered a deep ominous growl, tottered, and pitched forward on his blunt nose, spread out flat. “What are you doing?” asked Frau Hutten, in wonder. “If we do not keep him quiet, he will be sick again.”
“It came over me to test the permanence of his training,” said the Professor, with a gratified air. “No, he has forgotten nothing. Ah, Käthe, how blood and training do form and sustain character. Look at the good animal: he will never fail us.”
Frau Hutten said, “How he reminds me of the past, of our life, now we are going home again.” She gazed at Bébé with tenderness, but her thoughts were disturbed with looking backward and looking forward, for nothing in the past seemed properly related to the future. She was almost afraid to hope, for things in the old country must be very much changed, and in ways she could not be prepared for. She said as much to her husband.
“Where we are going,” he reassured her sweetly, “people and things and ways change slowly. We will be among those of our own age, our own way of thinking and feeling; they were the friends of our childhood and youth, they cannot now be strangers to us—or so we may only hope,” he added, bravely.
Frau Hutten was silent, remembering when the whole German colony in Mexico City went to a theater to see the moving picture of the funeral of the Kaiserin Augusta Viktoria. They rose in silence as the great hearse appeared, surrounded by its horse guard of helmeted soldiers. Like brothers and sisters reunited at the graveside of their mother, they all wept together, each turned and embraced the one nearest him. Aloud they had wept together in broken sobs and gulps, until the whole theater was a place of mourning, full of the sound of this homesick, heart-soothing sorrow. They had sung “A Mighty Fortress,” “O Tannenbaum” and “The Watch on the Rhine,” with tears still on their faces. How near to the homeland they had seemed at that moment, but never to be so near again, because of what they had lost: the good, the gentle, the long-suffering Empress who had been symbol of all they revered in home and family life, the generous hearth-stone around which their best memories clustered.
“What will it be like now, I wonder?” she wanted to ask her husband again, but she knew he could not answer except with hopes; and she did not wish to trouble him.
Professor Hutten was sunk in his thought too: how he had worked all these years, hoping against all reason that the day of his honorable retirement with savings and pension would come, and God in his goodness would let him see again the house where he was born in the Todmoos country of the Black Forest; and now it had come, he was full of misgivings. What would it be like? He buried his face in his hands, leaning forward in the deck chair, and almost instantly a qualm caught him in the pit of the stomach, and a surge of most awful sickness chased out his comfortable piety. He raised his head, streaming with sweat. “Käthe,” he said in a low despairing voice, “help me. For God’s sake quickly before anyone sees.”
It happened Frau Rittersdorf saw. But she was much too occupied searching for her goose-down pillow, pure white goose down covered with cream-and-pink striped taffeta, which had been sent to her from Germany all the way to Mexico as a Christmas present from her dear dead husband’s dear mother. How she could have misplaced it, have forgotten it for a moment, Frau Rittersdorf was unable to explain to herself. It was really indispensable to her comfort, as the deck chairs were unusually hard, or seemed to be so at any rate on this ship where everything was undeniably more than a little on the second-rate side. In any case, since no doubt she had left it in her chair, it was the plain duty of someone—the deck steward for choice—to have salvaged and returned it at once to her stateroom.
She advanced upon the steward firmly though kindly. He was a most polite and attentive fellow who spoke with an Austrian accent … “meine Dame,” he called her, which she rather preferred to the homelier-sounding Frau, “it cannot be lost, it is only misplaced for the moment, and I shall find and return it to you. After all, this is a small ship, and it cannot have got overboard by itself! So do please, dear lady, be at your ease and I shall bring it to you very presently.”
Frau Rittersdorf, winding her green veil closely about her head and knotting it over one ear, noticed those two awful Spanish children standing a few feet away, simply staring at her with animal curiosity. She returned their attention with a slit-eyed disciplinary face, such as had always proved effective with her English charges when she was a governess with a country family in England.
“Have you lost something?” asked the little girl in a high bold treble.
“Yes, have you stolen it?” inquired Frau Rittersdorf, sternly.
At this they seemed strangely agitated; they wriggled somewhat, exchanged wicked glances; the little boy said, “Who knows?” Then they both cackled with unchildish laughter and ran away. Frau Rittersdorf, considering exactly what she would do with them if they were in her power, moved over to the deck rail near that pair of young people, obviously American—what was there about Americans that made them so obviously only that? the gradual mongrelization of that dismaying country by the mingling of the steerage sweepings of Europe and the blacks had resulted only in a mediocrity of feature and mind impossible to describe!—yet she wondered what they could find to talk about so constantly, as they spent at least half their time in each other’s society, and one might think they should finally have exhausted topics for conversation. They were leaning together companionably, both pairs of eyes fixed on the glittering stretches of water, talking idly, with short pauses.
Frau Rittersdorf did not hope to overhear much, for she was slightly deaf, nor to observe details except at short distances, for she was extremely nearsighted. At the right distance, however, considering these disadvantages, she leaned upon the rail next the young man, and bringing her vision into focus swiftly, ascertained that he was younger than she had thought. His light hair was nicely cut, he had a good thin high nose and a well-shaped mouth, and a general though no doubt misleading air of good upbringing. His pale gray shirt was quite fresh but his white linen suit was ready for the wash.
The young woman wore a short-sleeved, belted no-colored frock that appeared to have been fashioned from hop sacks. Her face was pale and too thin, with high cheekbones and a sharp pointed chin that gave her a vixenish look. She had fairly good light eyes and black hair parted plainly in the middle—one of these adv
anced, emancipated young women of the Bohemian world, no doubt. Frau Rittersdorf noted that in repose his face was sulky and hers impatient. Suddenly they both lifted their heads and laughed together, and their faces were instantly gay, good-humored, a little reckless. She smiled involuntarily at the fresh, pretty sound of youthful happiness; they both saw her smile. Their expressions grew a little blank and cool, and they turned their faces away.
Frau Rittersdorf had seen quite enough to convince her that this was an odd outlandish pair; there was something about them she could not understand and did not like at all. They were not the sort of persons she would care to cultivate as traveling companions. She returned to her chair, arranged her skirts carefully about her legs, leaned back, missing her soft little pillow, and got out her notebook.
She had a poor memory and a passion for recording every minutest detail of her daily existence—even to the very moment in which she carelessly spooned her soup too hot or forgot to stamp a letter—mingled with scraps of philosophy, observations, reminiscence and meditation. For years she had filled notebook after notebook with tiny jottings in a sharp cultivated little handwriting, and as they were filled, she put them away neatly and never looked at them again. Shaking her gold-banded fountain pen, she wrote in English:
“These young Americans have the affectation of addressing each other always by their full names, perhaps the only formality they maintain between themselves, and a very gauche sort of thing it is, or perhaps it’s the only hope they have of making themselves known to the public. There is a faint atmosphere of moral slackness in their manner, their dress—I cannot quite place or describe it. It is more of an effluvium. The names are musical, if somewhat sentimental: Jenny Angel—the real name is, I suppose, Jane, Johanna Engel it would be, and much better, in the German—and David Darling. The latter is a common surname as well as a usual term of affection among Americans, I believe; much less among the frozen English naturally, though it does seem to be a corruption of the word Dear, Dearling, the diminutive; this would sound as if pronounced Darling, since the English have a slovenly way of speaking certain words to which, frankly speaking, I could never accustom myself during those seven long penitential years in that country. Naturally I learned English perfectly at school in Munich, and had always heard it spoken well, and the English manner of speech seemed very crude to me after that. Ah, those years of bitter exile! Ah, those frightful two-faced English children whose affection I could never win, and who could never learn German by any means. Deyahling, the English would call it after all, and the Americans, who seem to learn their language phonetically, or by ear, as they say, because of their distaste for reading, would add the sound of R, a letter they seem fond of to excess. It is all quite interesting in its limited way.”
Reading this over, she decided it was too good to hide, but would go well in a letter to her dearest friend and schoolmate of long ago, Sophie Bismarck, highly connected, unhappily married and living in luxury in Munich. Stupid little Sophie’s head would spin as always, trying to follow her brilliant schoolmate’s mind. She made a note in the margin, “Für liebe Sophie, to be translated in case she has forgotten her English,” dropped the book into her large flat handbag and got up to take her walk, nine times around the deck. Exercise warded off seasickness, kept down liverishness, gave one an appetite, indeed there was everything to be said for it, dull as it might be; and the boundless rolling waters of the mighty deep inspired noble thoughts.
Her dear husband had taught her all this. He was a man of endless activity, and believed firmly—how right he was—that good health was necessary to good morality. How many times he had fairly dragged her up and down during their Channel crossings, even in the worst weather—indeed he welcomed the worst weather as the most exhilarating test of courage—when they had to cling to any available support as if they were drowning, the waves dashing over them. Somewhere in the calm blue sky above she felt that her dear Otto, dead in his manly strength and beauty at the battle of Ypres, was looking down approvingly at his good, obedient Nannerl, walking—yes, and alone, Otto, alone!—round and round the deck for the sake of her health, as he would have her do.
On the seventh lap, feeling her arches fail her in her three-inch heels, she rested provisionally on the arm of her chair and took out her notebook again: “If those young American persons are not married, they ought to be. But in that monstrous country all the relations of life are so perverted, more especially between the sexes, it is next to impossible to judge them by any standards of true civilization.”
Reading this over, she decided it was unworthy of her. Where had her mind been wandering all this time? She struck out the whole passage, and wrote in above the thick black line: “Divine weather, if a little too warm, and a heavenly stroll with the pure sea air on my face, thinking of my dear Otto and of the blessings of our happy though all too brief marriage. R.I.P. August 25, 1931.”
She went on, piously to finish the two laps—what were fallen arches in comparison to the blissful sense of keeping faith with Otto?—carrying the journal between her hands as though it were a prayer book. She met the bride and groom also strolling, their clasped hands swinging lightly, both very beautiful in pure white; looking, too, astonishingly fresh and carefree considering the newness of their honeymoon. As they neared, she perceived that the bride, though serene-looking, was rather pale, with darkening smudges under her eyes; even a little ill, perhaps? And quite properly, Frau Rittersdorf answered herself with matronly approval. One had well-founded suspicions of those brides who remained unchanged in appearance and manner after marriage. Even with all the happiness of the new state, still one does not step from virginity to the strains and stresses of married life without visible sign. Say what you will, it is not all roses! She considered this thought for a while and decided it was leading her mind into forbidden areas: “Even during the most passionate of her husband’s embraces, a pure woman never permits herself an impure thought,” her Otto had instructed her more than once: a hard saying, but no doubt true. Resolutely she turned her mind to higher things, putting the memory of Otto back once more in the sacred potpourri of the past.
Jenny had coffee early, on deck, in the cool morning light blue-tinctured between sea and sky, and began making sketches with a fountain pen: the canvas wind-funnel like a conventional ghost with outspread arms over the grated pit of the steerage eating place; Bébé the white bulldog, apparently recovering from his seasickness, sprawled weightily on his belly; Elsa, her cabin mate, from memory, big arms raised, doing her hair; a passing sailor with a bucket; furtively, after a quick glance around, a hasty outline of Herr Glocken’s harmonious, interesting deformity. Jenny, sitting at ease in her own neatly pretty small body which gave her very little trouble except for its long famine of love, rather idly wondered what it might be like to live in such a hideous shape as Herr Glocken’s. The thought frightened her so much she started sharply and dropped her pen, in a flash of blind terror and suffocation, a child again locked in her grandmother’s bedroom closet narrow as a coffin. She shut her eyes so tightly that when she opened them she saw Wilhelm Freytag through a rainbow dazzle of light, taking a long rather graceful stride toward her, holding out her pen.
He stopped before her then, receiving her thanks, looking very sunny and amiable, waiting to be invited to sit with her. She moved her legs aside and made room for him on the footrest of her chair.
“But if you are doing something—?” he said.
“This is just idleness,” Jenny told him. “A form of solitaire. I’d much rather gossip a little.” She leaned toward him, feeling again how her habitual mood of resentment, the growing bitterness and melancholy of her mind when she was alone, could so quickly be dispersed in the sound of voices and the nearness of others, no matter if the voices had nothing to say to her, if the presences were strangers indifferent to her. Women spoil this fellow, she thought: his charm is perhaps slightly overconfident—and then reflected that the society of someone wi
th no troubles of his own might be a rest for her after her thorny progress with David.
Freytag was cheerfully ready for gossip, and happy to tell her there was a mysterious stranger aboard, a real political prisoner, being deported from Cuba, it was said, in connection with the student riots that led to the closing of the University—to be confined in cabin for the whole voyage, finally to be put off ship at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
“In chains, I suppose,” said Jenny. “What did he do?”
“It’s a woman.”
“Would that make any difference?”
“I hope so,” said Freytag. “But then, besides that, she is a Spanish countess, and to the Captain, let me tell you, that alone makes all the difference possible. He has given orders all around that she is to be treated with the utmost consideration, and sends messages to her himself asking her what she would like. No, our prisoner isn’t going to suffer. She has a whole stateroom on Deck A to herself—more than I was able to get!”
“I would be a prisoner myself for that,” said Jenny.
“Yes, indeed. I like space above everything, but I have that seven-foot Swede Hansen for cabin mate, and he sleeps in the upper berth with his feet stuck out so that I bump my head on them every morning.”
“My cabin mate is on the ample side, too,” said Jenny, “but a very nice girl and we don’t elbow each other much.”
“Why, I thought you were with your husband,” said Freytag, and there danced in his eyes a curiosity so instant and so candid it was almost appealing.