introducing scenes from a foreign country, and also conveying welcome intelligence, together with some instruction
it was at a little village perched well up on one of the carriage-roads ascending the brocken, a fortnight or so ago, that i received a wire from uncle dudley. it was kind of him to think of it—all the more as he had good news to tell. “family lighted square on their feet,” was what the message said, and i was glad to gather from this that the grundys had weathered their misfortunes, and that mrs albert was herself again.
the thought was full of charm. it seemed as if i had never realised before how fond i was of these good people. in sober fact; i dare say that i had not dwelt much upon their woes during my holiday. but now, with this affectionately thoughtful telegram addressing me as their oldest friend, the one whom they wished to be the first to share the joy of their rescued state, it was easy enough to make myself believe that my whole vacation had been darkened with brooding over their unhappiness.
it had not occurred to me before, but that was undoubtedly why i had not liked the harz so much this year as usual. now that i thought of it, walking down the birch-lined footpath towards the hamlet and the telegraph office, the place seemed to have gone off a good deal. in other seasons, before the spectre of cholera flooded its sylvan retreats with an invading horde of hamburgers, the harzwald had been my favourite resort. i had grown to love its fir-clad slopes, its shadowed glens, its atmosphere of prehistoric myth and legend, as if i were part and product of them all. its people, too, had come much nearer to my breast than any other germans ever could. i had enjoyed being with them just because they were what the local schoolmaster disdainfully declared them to be—erdzertrümmerungsprozeszuribekanntevolk—that is to say, people entirely ignorant of the scientific theories about geological upheavals and volcanic formations, and so able cheerfully to put their trust in the goblins who reared these strange boulders in fantastic piles on every hill top, and to hear with good faith the shouts of the witches as they bounded over the hexentanzplatz. last year it had seemed even worth the added discomfort of the swarming hamburgers to be again in this wholesome, sweet-aired primitive place. but this year—i saw now clearly as i looked over uncle dudley’s message once more—it had not been so pleasant. the hotel boy, fritzchen, whom i had watched year after year with the warmth of a fatherly well-wisher—smiling with satisfaction at his jovial countenance, his bustling and competent ways, and his comical attempts at english—had this season swollen up into a burly and consequential lout, with a straw-coloured sprouting on his upper-lip, and a military manner. they called him fritz now, and he gave me beer out of the old keg after i had heard the new one tapped.
the evening gatherings of the villagers in the hotel, too, were not amusing as they once had been. the huge lion-maned and grossly over-bearded kantor, or music-master, who came regularly at nightfall to thump on the table with his bludgeon-like walking stick, to roar forth impassioned monologues on religion and politics, and to bellow ceaselessly at fritzchen for more beer, had formerly delighted me. this time he seemed only a noisy nuisance, and the half-circle of grave old retired foresters and middle-aged jàger officers who sat watching him over their pipes, striving vainly now and again to get in a word edgewise about the auctions of felled trees in the woods, or the mutinous tendencies of the charcoal-burners, presented themselves in the light of tiresome prigs. if they had been worth their salt, i felt, they would long ago have brained the kantor with their stoneware mugs. even as i walked i began to be conscious that a three weeks’ stay in the harz was a good deal of time, and that the remaining third would certainly hang on my hands.
by the time i reached the telegraph station i had my answer to uncle dudley ready in my mind. he liked the forcible imagery of australia and the far west; and i would speak to him at this joyful juncture after his own heart. it seemed that i could best do this by giving him to understand that i was celebrating his news—that i was, in one of his own phrases, “painting the town red.” it required some ingenuity to work this idea out right, but i finally wrote what appeared to answer the purpose:—“brocken und umgebung sind roth gemalen”—and handed it in to the man at the window.
he was a young man with close-cropped yellow hair and spectacles, holding his chin and neck very stiff in the high collar of his uniform. he glanced over my despatch, at first with careless dignity. then he read it again attentively. then he laid it on the table, and bent his tight-buttoned form over it as well as might be in a severe and prolonged scrutiny. at last he raised himself, turned a petrifying gaze on through his glasses at me, and shook his head.
“it is not true,” he said. “some one has you deceived.”
“but,” i tried to explain to him, with the little german that i knew scattering itself in all directions in the face of this crisis, “it is a figure of speech, a joke, a——”
the telegraph man stared coldly at my luckless despatch, and then at me. “you would wish to state to your friend, perhaps,” he suggested, “that they seem as if they had been coloured with red, owing to the change in the leaves.”
“no, no,” i put in. “it must be that they have been painted, are painted, or he will not me understand.”
“but, my good sir,” retorted the operator with emphasis, “they are not painted! from the door gaze you forth! what make you with this nonsense, that brocken and vicinity are red painted?”
“well, then,” i said wearily, oppressed by the magnitude of the task, “i don’t know how to word it myself, but you can fix it for me. just say that i am going to paint them red—that will do just as well.
“but you shall not! it is forbidden!” exclaimed the official, holding himself like a poker, and glaring vehemence through his glasses. “it is strongly forbidden! when you one brush-mark shall make, quick to the prison go you. in germany have we for natural beauty respect—also laws.”
reluctantly, but of necessity, i abandoned metaphor, and in a humble spirit telegraphed in english to uncle dudley at his club that i was very glad. even as my pen clung in irresolution on the paper over this word “glad,” the impulse rose in me to add: “tired of harz. am returning immediately.”
“when the same here is,” remarked the operator, moodily studying the unknown words, “in brunswick stopped it will be.”
i translated it for him, and added, “i go from here home, to be where officials their own business mind.”
he nodded, not unamiably, and replied as he handed me out my change: “yes, i know: england. so well their own business there officials mind, that balfour to argentina easily comes.”
walking up the hillside again, already quite captive to the fascination of the morrow’s homeward flight, i met at the turn of the path a family party—father, mother, and two girls in the younger teens—seated along the rocky siding, and gazing with a common air of dejection upon a portentous row of bags and portmanteaus at their feet. the notion that they were hamburgers died still-born. nothing more obviously un-german than these wayfarers was ever seen.
“i hope, sir,” the man spoke up as i approached, “that i am right in presuming that you speak english!”
i bowed assent, and even as i did so, recognised him. “i hope i am right,” i answered, “in thinking that i have met you before—at mr albert grundy’s in london—you are the american gentleman with the oboid oil engine, are you not?”
“well, by george!” he cried, rising and offering his hand with frank delight, and introducing me in a single comprehensive wave to his wife and daughters. “yes, sir,” he went on, “and i wish i had an oboid here right now—up in the basement of that stone boarding-house on the knoll there—just for the sake of heating up, and shutting down the valves, and blowing the whole damned thing sky-high. that would suit me, sir, right down to the ground.”
“were strangers here, sir,” he explained in answer to my question: “we’d seen a good deal of the dutch at home—i mean our home—and we thought we’d like to take a look at ‘em in the place they come from. well, sir, we’ve had our look, and we’re satisfied. we don’t want any more on our plate, thank you. one helping is an elegant sufficiency. do you know the trick they played on us? why, i took a team of horses yesterday from a place they called ibsenburg or ilsenburg, or some such name, and had it explained to my driver that he was to take us up to the top of the brocken, there, and stop all night, and fetch us back this morning. when we got up as far as shierke, there, it was getting pretty dark, and the women-folks were nervous, and so we laid up for the night. there didn’t seem anything for the driver to do but set around in the kitchen and drink beer, and he needed money for that, and so i gave him some loose silver, and told him to make himself at home. we got the words out of a dictionary for that—machen sie selbst zu heim we figured ‘em out to be—and i spoke them at him slowly and distinctly, so that he had no earthly excuse for not understanding. but, would you believe it, sir, the miserable cuss just up and skipped out, horses, rig and all, while we were getting supper! and here we were this morning, landed high and dry. no conveyance, nobody to comprehend a word of english, no nothing. we haven’t seen the top of their darned mountain even.”
“what i’m more concerned about, i tell wilbur,” put in the lady, “is seeing the bottom of it. if they had only sense enough to make valises and bonnet-boxes ball-shaped, we could have rolled ‘em down hill.”
“there’ll be no trouble about all that,” i assured them, and we talked for a little about the simple enough process of getting their luggage carried down to the village, and of finding a vehicle there. i, indeed, agreed to make one of their party on quitting the harz, that very afternoon.
“and now tell me about the grundys,” i urged, when these more pressing matters were out of the way. “i got a wire to-day saying—hinting that they are in luck’s way again.”
“is that so?” exclaimed the american, at once surprised and pleased. “i’m glad to hear it. i can’t guess what it might be in. grundy’s got so many irons in the fire—some white hot, some lukewarm, some frosted straight through—you never can tell. the funny thing is—he can’t tell himself. why, sir, those men of yours in the city of london, they don’t know any more about business than a babe unborn. if they were in new york they’d have their eyeteeth skinned out of their heads in the shake of a lamb’s tail. why, we’ve been milking them dry for a dozen years back. and yet, you know, somehow——”
“somehow—?” i echoed, encouragingly.
“well, sir, somehow—that’s the odd thing about it—they don’t stay milked.”
