She would never admit that she had loved any man but David, and more curious still, she would never admit that any man, except perhaps David, she would wait and see, had ever loved her. “None of it meant anything at all, David darling,” she assured him over and over with earnest innocence, “nothing lasted. It was just for the excitement, David. It wasn’t love, it was fox fire.” She could never understand why, for him, the whole wrong lay precisely there. It should have been love, it was a disgrace to her that it was not love; and, he told himself with bitterness, it isn’t love again, I expect. Maybe it will never be anything but fox fire.
It was Sunday morning, after all, as the godless were reminded by a sight of the godly wearing Sunday faces going each one to his own kind of worship. At six o’clock Father Carillo was down on the steerage deck, saying Mass before a portable altar adorned with small lighted candles and limp red paper flowers. The people knelt and rose and knelt again, huddled shoulder to shoulder, with bowed heads and moving lips, their hands fluttering constantly in a complicated series of signs of the Cross. Among them all, only six women were in a state of grace. They crawled forward on their knees, their heads shawled in black, to receive Holy Communion. Raising their chins and closing their eyes, they opened their mouths wide and thrust forth their pallid tongues to inordinate lengths to partake of the Angelic Bread. The priest went through the ceremony severely and hastily, placing the wafers on the outstretched tongues expertly and snatching back his hand. He ended the Mass in due form but at top speed, and almost instantly began to pack up his altar as if he were removing it from a place of pestilence.
At the farthest end of the deck from the altar, a considerable group of men who had stood throughout the ritual with their backs to the priest now faced about and began to disperse. In silence, without any other demonstration, they expressed contempt and anger even in the movements of their hands, exchanged scornful derisive smiles. The fat man in the cherry-colored shirt seemed to be the ringleader. He walked deliberately against a man who was still kneeling, his ragged cap in hand, almost knocking him over. The man got to his feet, put his cap on slouchwise and squared up to the other, who stopped short, looking down his nose with exaggerated disdain.
“Wipe that dirty look off your face in the presence of the Host,” said the man who had been jostled, with extraordinary ferocity.
“In the presence of what?” asked the fat man. “I see a eunuch with a bread pill.”
They struck at each other’s mouths almost at the same instant; the smaller man leaped and tripped the fat man, they crashed to the deck together and fought with deadly fury for a few seconds, when half a dozen men seized and separated them by force, holding them intently, while the women scattered, crying out and stumbling over chairs and bundles.
Father Carillo picked up his altar and made for the stairs without even a glance towards the unseemly disturbance. When the men who had fought were freed and standing, there was blood on their faces and their torn clothes. Their eyes, quite murderous and calculating, met for an instant in a promise that this was not the end; then they walked away from each other in silence, each mopping his face with a dirty rag, each surrounded by his own friends, or guards as they had become.
At seven, in the small library off the main salon, Father Garza said Mass attended by the troupe of Spanish dancers, the bride and groom, Dr. Schumann, Frau Otto Schmitt and Señora Ortega, who was pale and blotchy so early in the morning, and who leaned upon the shoulder of her Indian nurse. All knelt upon the carpeted floor, missing their padded prayer stools, the soft hot wind bringing out drops of sweat on their foreheads. The Spaniards knelt closely together, their bitter faces closed smugly, their dingy slender hands twiddling with their rosaries.
Frau Schmitt, observing that the bride and groom knelt at a discreet distance from each other and did not even once exchange a glance, approved this delicacy of behavior. She then covered her face with her hands to shut out all distractions, and gave herself up to soft emotions, remembered blisses of mingled love and prayer, a melting sweet, ageless vision of divine joys to come. Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world only in Thy grace shall my soul be healed. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Near her, Amparo stirred, rustling her petticoats and rattling her beads, hissing her prayers under her breath, exuding from every pore a warm spermy odor mixed with the kind of perfume only the lowest sort of woman would ever use. Frau Schmitt, disturbed by the sounds and the smells, body odors and stale hair oil added from all sides, moved away a few paces on her knees, then stopped, feeling foolish. Her happy mood was shattered. She sat back on her heels, resigned and dull, opened her eyes and followed Father Garza’s formal gestures as he murmured in a low voice. She knew it all by heart, but feeling cheated of her rapture, she stole glances now and then at the Spaniards, who had cheated her.
They were peculiarly repellent to her; how could anyone call such swarthy people beautiful? The presence of Dr. Schumann, the good and wise man, was comforting to her. She felt she knew him well, ah, he was the kind of man she understood and who would understand her. A tender, sunny memory of her honeymoon at Salzburg rose like a little painting framed in gold in her mind—her new, wonderful, ever-to-be-wonderful husband with her in their first room together in the White Horse Inn at St. Wolfgang’s; the lovely green summer light everywhere; the small white steamer coming in from a trip around the lake, and everyone going down to a wharf no larger than a school platform, to meet it as if it came from across the sea … and the little gilded globes dancing in the fountain spray at Hellbrunn, and the darling little dwarfs and gnomes in glazed colored crockery peeping out from hedges and flowerbeds! Ah, those Spaniards with their harsh faces and hating eyes, if ever they had seen the white marble statue of the martyred Empress Elizabeth at Hellbrunn, they would understand what beauty is … This was a sad voyage, her last in this world maybe, and what a pity most of the people around her were so unpleasant. She was so bitterly lonely for her husband, one night she had put herself to sleep imagining that she might get up and go down into the hold, and just sit there by his coffin in the dark, for the dear company of it. Then in her sleep she had gone down, and there at the door stood her husband shining like moonlight on the sea, and he had said, waving his hand, “Go back, go back, go back,” just that and nothing more, three times; and had disappeared. She had waked in a fright, turned on her bed light and begun to say her rosary; and now she had only to resign herself to not seeing him again in this poor world, and to try not to let her heart be hardened against the poor and the unfortunate—for surely those dreadful Spaniards were both. She had always believed so deeply that human beings wished only to be quiet and happy, each in his own way: but there was a spirit of evil in them that could not let each other be in peace. One man’s desire must always crowd out another’s, one must always take his own good at another’s expense. Or so it seemed. God forgive us all.
Herr Löwenthal, wandering moodily alone, after having put on his phylacteries and said his morning prayers, was brooding hopelessly on Herr Rieber’s treatment of him. It was not a matter of rude words, for Herr Rieber would hardly speak to him, and if Herr Löwenthal asked a civil question he got only a grunt for answer: the trouble was that Herr Rieber behaved as if he were alone in the cabin, and had all the rights and space there. He pushed Löwenthal’s belongings around as if they were mere trash in his way. Once he had deliberately swept all of Löwenthal’s toilet things off the shelf to the floor, breaking a good bottle of shaving lotion, and he had not even the decency to pretend it was an accident.
If Herr Löwenthal hung his pajamas in the small locker near Herr Rieber’s garments, Herr Rieber, with a nasty fastidious expression, handling the pajamas between thumb and forefinger, would remove them and let them drop to the floor. And all this, mind you, in the most confident insolence, as if he knew he could dare venture to any lengths without fear of consequence.
Herr
Löwenthal, accepting all this without present protest, making up his mind painfully to endure in silence and wait as patiently as he could for the end of this monstrous situation, spent a good deal of his time trying to find a place of his own to stow his property that could not possibly be claimed by Herr Rieber. He repacked his suitcase and sample cases, put his new supply of toilet articles in a bag, and set them all in the corner opposite the bunks, at the foot of and under the couch. Once he found them all in the middle of the floor again, and once piled helter-skelter in the lower bunk. There would be no end to it, that was clear. Herr Löwenthal with some wry humor began to think of Herr Rieber as that fabulous German household sprite of mischief, the poltergeist. No poltergeist could have been more persistent in malice. All this so soon, what would not Herr Poltergeist think of to make himself tiresome before they reached Bremerhaven?
This dark question in mind, Herr Löwenthal on deck glanced through the window into the small library and saw the Mass going on. He restrained his impulse to spit until he had passed beyond the line of vision of the worshipers; then, his mouth watering with disgust, he moved to the rail and spat like a landlubber into the wind, which blew it back in his face. At his curse being thus returned to his very teeth, his whole body was suffused with superstitious terror, it scurried like mice in his blood, it shook his nerves from head to foot. “God forbid,” he said aloud, with true piety, and dropped shuddering all over in the nearest deck chair.
Father Garza came out in a few minutes, looking very refreshed and good-natured after the performance of his religious duties, lifting his cassock skirt and plunging his square bony hand into his trousers pocket to fetch forth a packet of cigarettes. Father Carillo joined him. They both beamed amicably upon Herr Löwenthal, whose gaze was fixed unseeing upon them. “Good morning,” said the fathers, affably, in very bad German, and Father Garza added, “It’s a beautiful day we are having.” They paced on slowly, and Herr Löwenthal in his pit of misery did not even hear them until they were gone. He pulled himself up laboriously. “Guten Morgen,” he said forlornly, to the empty air and the bitter rolling sea.
There being no Lutheran minister aboard, the Captain assumed leadership of the religious observances suitable to the day. At eleven o’clock all the guests at his table except Dr. Schumann and Frau Schmitt gathered in the main salon, and were joined there by Herr Wilibald Graf and his nephew, Herr Glocken and the Lutz family, the Baumgartners and their son Hans. Even Wilhelm Freytag, who happened to be already present, stayed on for the service. The Captain read a few verses of Holy Scripture in his most commanding voice, and said the appropriate prayers, his congregation listening respectfully with bowed heads. Everybody joined in several fine rollicking hymns, their firm warm voices carrying all through the ship, even out to the bar, where the barman stood listening thoughtfully, with a pleased face, nodding in time and humming under his breath.
Frau Hutten, Frau Rittersdorf and Frau Schmitt retired to the shady side of the deck prepared to sit there in Sunday dullness waiting for their dinner. Herr Professor Hutten took part in a conversation with the Captain and Dr. Schumann, a short distance away. Their voices were low and their manner earnest, so the women gave up trying to overhear, and Frau Hutten, observing that Frau Rittersdorf was writing in her notebook, kept a considerate silence, fumbling absently with Bébé’s cropped ears.
“It seems that those young Americans,” wrote Frau Rittersdorf neatly, “have quite commonplace names, after all, Scott and Brown. Braun the name no doubt was, and perhaps the young woman is of German origin, though I should detest thinking so. One more un-German in every respect it would be difficult to imagine. Angel and Darling are their love-names for each other. In quite bad taste of course, and much exaggerated besides, as neither of them is in the slightest degree attractive. She is a dry thing like too many American women—even the beautiful ones have no real freshness, but seem either like painted wood or just on the point of fading. This is caused, I am told on good authority, by their almost universal custom of losing their virginity at puberty or even earlier, and thereafter leading lives of the utmost promiscuousness. But this young woman is not beautiful in the least; I should think she might have encountered difficulties in losing her virtue at any age. As for the young man, I suppose she is the best he can do for himself, and indeed, is quite all that he deserves.” She tucked her pen in the narrow pocket on the back of the book and leaned back cheerfully, thinking she had well repaid that pair for misleading her in the first instance.
She turned to speak to Frau Hutten, when her attention was arrested by the queer behavior of Herr Rieber and Fräulein Spöcken-kieker, engaged in a most unedifying scuffle at the rail. Herr Rieber was wearing the lady’s green and white scarf around his neck, and she was rather pulling him about by the ends. Frau Rittersdorf snapped her face-à-main upward for an instant. Yes, that girl was pretending to tie a bow under Herr Rieber’s chin, but she was really drawing the noose about his windpipe until he clutched for air and his beaming smile almost disappeared in a blue cloud of distended veins. She then loosened the knot, and the good-humored martyr went through a pantomime of coming to life again, gratefully.
His whole attitude was offensive to Frau Rittersdorf. It was unbecoming to the dignity of a man to submit to amorous persecutions from any woman, no matter how irresistible her charms. More properly the other way about, for the crown of womanhood was suffering for the sake of love. A positive thrill of sensual excitement ran through Frau Rittersdorf’s frame as she tried to imagine what would have happened if ever she had, no matter how playfully, attempted to strangle her Otto.
“Let us have some beer,” shouted Herr Rieber gleefully, stuffing the scarf in his pocket, where it dangled like a tail, and the shameless pair ran away, followed by a row of censorious glances. Frau Rittersdorf remarked to Frau Hutten, in a sweet charitable voice: “If one judged always by appearances, how often one would be obliged to think the worst.”
Frau Hutten stirred lazily, and after reflection, answered with indulgence: “Ah well, it seems that neither of them is married. Who knows, it may be a match.”
Little Frau Otto Schmitt ventured: “They seem rather oddly matched. I always like to see the man taller than the woman.”
The three then noted that Captain Thiele, Herr Professor Hutten and Dr. Schumann were still absorbed in their talk a safe distance away. They gave free rein to their womanly tongues without fear of being overheard by the men, to whom such talk was always trivial, unworthy, and fair game for their male sense of ridicule.
“Fräulein Spöckenkieker is a divorced woman, so I have heard,” said Frau Rittersdorf. “She is, I am given to understand, a woman of business—a lingerie business of sorts, she has three shops and has kept her maiden name in all circumstances. No wonder she no longer has a husband. It may also account for her manners, or lack of them.”
“I wished to continue with my teaching after marriage,” said Frau Hutten, with wifely pride, “but my husband would not hear of it for a moment. The husband supports the family, he told me, and the wife makes a happy home for them both. That is her sacred mission, he said, and she must be prevented at all costs from abandoning it. And so it was. From that day to this. I have done only housework, except to act as secretary to my husband.”
Frau Schmitt blushed. “I taught for years,” she said, “in the same school with my husband, who was in poor health, almost an invalid, after the war. He could not carry a full professorship; it was important for him not to be too heavily burdened. We had no children, what else should I have been doing? There was not enough to do in our simple little house to keep me occupied. No, I was glad to help my husband. And we had a happy home as well.” Her tone was gently defensive and self-satisfied.
“We can make no fixed rules, after all; it depends always on what the husband wishes,” said Frau Hutten. “For me, I lived only to please my husband. Now, whatever life was like in that wild foreign country, we are all going home at last. But i
t cannot be the same,” she told Frau Rittersdorf. “Nothing can be the same. We went out to Mexico in 1912, foreseeing nothing of the disaster that was to overtake our beloved country. Fortunately, the Professor has very poor eyesight, and has suffered since youth with fallen arches: there was never any question of his going to war—”
“Fortunately?” echoed Frau Rittersdorf, her arched eyebrows rising. “Fortunately, my husband was a magnificent, a perfect physical specimen of a man, a Captain, who saw three years’ service at the front, in the very thick, I may say, of the battle. He received the Iron Cross for his displays of superhuman courage in action, and he was killed on the field.… Is it not strange that war should destroy such men, the brave, the noble-minded, the sound in body, the invaluable fathers, and leave only the defectives to carry on the race? Oh, I have asked myself that question many times in these years since I have been alone, and I can find no answer!”
“The world needs scholars and thinkers as well as soldiers,” said Frau Hutten, mildly. She was proof against this argument, being the sort of woman who admired intellectual attainments and bowed eagerly to moral superiority. “But I quite understand your feelings in the matter.”
“My husband,” said Frau Schmitt, “was a brave soldier, and a fine scholar, at once. These qualities are not incompatible. My husband …”
She stopped, drawing a long breath, which fetched up tears on its return as a pump from a well. Her face quivering, she felt blindly for her handkerchief. “No better than a dead man all those years,” she said, choking, “a dead man all those years.”
The two women observed her display of feeling with composure and perhaps a slight tinge of satisfaction. Women must weep, each one her own tears for her own troubles, in her own time. Tearless themselves at the moment, their faces wore also a faint expression of disapproval. Frau Schmitt appeared to be making rather a parade of grief, yet they could not help seeing with some adverse criticism that, in spite of her widow’s crape, she wore a heavy gold necklace with a large locket—inappropriate, to say the least. Frau Schmitt saw their glances wandering around her neck and throat, and being another woman, guessed their thought. She put her hand over the locket: “My husband’s portrait,” she said. “I have worn it so long, I cannot be without it!”