“by all the saints,” thought the terrified madame doppeldick, “he will be for packing off to bed at once!”—and in the vain hope of inducing him to sup beforehand, she seized, yes, she actually seized the devoted dish of oysters, and made them relieve guard, with the home-made bacon, just under the captain’s nose. it was now honest dietrich’s turn to try to catch the eyes of posts, and tread on the toes of stock-fish; however, for this time the natives were safe.
“by your leave, madame,” said the abominable voice through the moustachios,
[pg 215]
“i will take nothing except a candle. what with the heavy rain at first, and then the horse artillery ploughing up our marching ground, i am really dog-tired with my day’s work. if you will do me the favour, therefore, to show me to my chamber——”
“what next?” as the frog said when his tail fell off.
“not for the whole world!” exclaimed the horrified madame doppeldick—“not for the whole world, i mean, till you have hob-and-nobbed with us—at least with the good man”—and, like a warm-hearted hostess, jealous of the honour of her hospitality, she snatched up the spare-candle, and hurried off to the barrel. if she could but set them down to drinking, she calculated, let who would be the second, she would herself be the first in bed, if she jumped into it with all her clothes on. it was a likely scheme enough,—but alas! it fell through, like the rest!—before she had drawn half a flask of essigberger, or holzapfelheimer, for i forget which—she was alarmed by the
[pg 216]
double screech of two chairs pushed suddenly back on the uncarpeted floor. then came a trampling of light and heavy feet—and although she dropped the bottle—and forgot to turn the spigot—and carried the candle without the candlestick—and left her left slipper behind her,—still, in spite of all the haste she could make, she only reached the stair-foot just in time to see two prussian-blue coat-tails, turned up with red, whisking in at the bed-room door!
chapter vii.
“oh the cruel, the killing ill-luck that pursues us!” exclaimed the forlorn madame doppeldick, as her husband returned, with his mouth watering, to the little parlour, where, by some sort of attraction, he was drawn into the captain’s vacant chair, instead of his own. in a few seconds the plumpest of adam kloot’s tender souvenirs, of about the size and shape of a penny bun, was sliding over his tongue. then another went—and another—and another. they were a little gone or so, and no wonder; for they had travelled up the rhine and the moselle, in a dry “schiff,” not a “dampschiff,” towed by real horse-powers, instead of steam-powers, against the stream. to tell the naked truth, there were only four words in the world that a respectably fresh cod’s head could have said to them, namely—
no matter: down they went glibly, glibly. the lemon-juice did something for them, and the vinegar still more, by making them seem sharp instead of flat. honest dietrich enjoyed them as mightily as adam kloot could have wished; and was in no humour, you may be sure, for spinning prolix answers or long-winded speeches.
“they are good—very!—excellent! malchen!—just eat a couple.”
but the mind of the forlorn malchen was occupied with any thing but oysters; it was fixed upon things above, or at least overhead. “i do not think i can sit up all night,” she murmured, concluding with such a gape that the tears squeezed out plentifully between her fat little eyelids.
“i’ve found only one bad one—and that was full of black mud—schloo—oo—oo—ooop!”—slirropped honest dietrich. n. b. there is no established formula of minims and crotchets on the gamut to represent the swallowing of an oyster: so the aforesaid syllables of “schloo—oo—oo—ooop,” must stand in their stead.
“as for sleeping in my clothes,” continued madame doppeldick, “the weather is so very warm,—and the little window won’t open—and with two in a bed—”
“the english do it, malchen,—schloo—oo—ooop!”
“but the english beds have curtains,” said madame doppeldick, “thick stuff or canvas curtains, dietrich,—all round, and over the top—just like a general’s tent.”
“we can go—schloo—ooop—to bed in the dark, malchen.”
“no—no,” objected madam doppeldick, with a grave shake of her head. “we’ll have no blindman’s-buff work, dietrich,—and maybe blundering into wrong beds.”
[pg 218]
“schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“and if ever i saw a wild, rakish, immoral, irreligious-looking young man, dietrich, the captain is one!”
“schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“did you observe, dietrich, how shamefully he stared at me?”
“schloo—ooop.”
“and the cut on his forehead, dietrich, i’ll be bound he got it for no good!”
“schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“confound adam kloot and his oysters to boot!” exclaimed the offended madame doppeldick, irritated beyond all patience at the bovine apathy of her connubial partner. “i wish, i do, that the nets had burst in catching them!”
“why, what can one do, malchen?” asked honest dietrich, looking up for the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters had all vanished, leaving only the two-a-penny ones behind.
“saint ursula only knows!” sighed madame doppeldick, her voice relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. “i only know that i will never undress in the room!”
“then you must undress out of it, malchen. schloo—oop. schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“i believe that must be the way after all,” said madame doppeldick, on whose mind her husband’s sentence of transcendental philosophy had cast a new light. “to be sure there is a little landing-place at the stair-head, and our bed is exactly opposite the door—and if one scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in—but are you sure, dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the captain? did you tell him that his was the one next the window—with the patchwork coverlet?”
“not a word of it!” answered honest dietrich, who like all other prussians had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore moderately interested in military manœuvres.
[pg 219]
“not a word of it—we talked all about the review. but i did what was far better, my own malchen, for i saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet, with my own eyes, and then took away his candle—schloo—oo—oop!”
“it was done like my own dear, kind dietrich,” exclaimed the delighted madame doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed him between the nose and chin.
the domestic dilemma was disarmed of its horns, madame doppeldick saw her way before her, as clear and open as the rhine three months after the ice has broken up. from that moment, as long as the dish contained two oysters, the air of “schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop” was sung, as “arranged for a duet.”
chapter viii.
“all is quiet, thank heaven! the captain is as fast as a church,” thought madame doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place, at the stair-head. “now then, my own dietrich,” she whispered, “are you ready to run?” for like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.
but the deliberate dietrich was not prepared to escort her. he had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. at last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of andernach—that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan, with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.
[pg 220]
“the night-light may be left burning where it is, dietrich.”
“now then, malchen!”
“now then dietrich,—and run gently—on your toes!”
no sooner said than done. the modest malchen with the speed of a young wild elephant made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. the phlegmatic dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came squash! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead.
