I felt that the whole thing was out of taste and tried in vain, in one of the pauses, to give a lead to my hostess by referring to the prospect of a shipping subsidy bill going through to offset the register of alien ships. But she was too utterly dense to take it up. She never even turned her head. All through dinner that ass talked --he and that silly young actor they're always asking there that is perpetually doing imitations of the vaudeville people. That kind of thing may be all right, for those who care for it--I frankly don't--outside a theatre. But to my mind the idea of trying to throw people into fits of laughter at a dinner-table is simply execrable taste. I cannot see the sense of people shrieking with laughter at dinner. I have, I suppose, a better sense of humour than most people. But to my mind a humourous story should be told quietly and slowly in a way to bring out the point of the humour and to make it quite clear by preparing for it with proper explanations. But with people like that I find I no sooner get well started with a story than some fool or other breaks in. I had a most amusing experience the other day--that is, about fifteen years ago--at a summer hotel in the Adirondacks, that one would think would have amused even a shallow lot of people like those, but I had no sooner started to tell it--or had hardly done more than to describe the Adirondacks in a general way--than, first thing I know, my hostess, stupid woman, had risen and all the ladies were trooping out.
As to getting in a word edgeways with the men over the cigars--perfectly impossible! They're worse than the women. They were all buzzing round the infernal Englishman with questions about Flanders and the army at the front. I tried in vain to get their attention for a minute to give them my impressions of the Belgian peasantry (during my visit there in 1885), but my host simply turned to me for a second and said, "Have some more port?" and was back again listening to the asinine Englishman.
And when we went upstairs to the drawing-room I found myself, to my disgust, side-tracked in a corner of the room with that supreme old jackass of a professor--their uncle, I think, or something of the sort. In all my life I never met a prosier man. He bored me blue with long accounts of his visit to Serbia and his impressions of the Serbian peasantry in 1875.
I should have left early, but it would have been too noticeable.
The trouble with a woman like that is that she asks the wrong people to her parties.
BUT,
(V) HIS LITTLE SON
You haven't seen him? Why, that's incredible. You must have. He goes past your house every day on his way to his kindergarten. You must have seen him a thousand times. And he's a boy you couldn't help noticing. You'd pick that boy out among a hundred, right away. "There's a remarkable boy," you'd say. I notice people always turn and look at him on the street. He's just the image of me. Everybody notices it at once.
How old? He's twelve. Twelve and two weeks yesterday. But he's so bright you'd think he was fifteen. And the things he says! You'd laugh! I've written a lot of them down in a book for fear of losing them. Some day when you come up to the house I'll read them to you. Come some evening. Come early so that we'll have lots of time. He said to me one day, "Dad" (he always calls me Dad), "what makes the sky blue?" Pretty thoughtful, eh, for a little fellow of twelve? He's always asking questions like that. I wish I could remember half of them.
And I'm bringing him up right, I tell you. I got him a little savings box a while ago, and have got him taught to put all his money in it, and not give any of it away, so that when he grows up he'll be all right.
On his last birthday I put a five dollar gold piece into it for him and explained to him what five dollars meant, and what a lot you could do with it if you hung on to it. You ought to have seen him listen.
"Dad," he says, "I guess you're the kindest man in the world, aren't you?"
Come up some time and see him.
IX. More than Twice-told Tales; or,
Every Man his Own Hero
(I)
The familiar story told about himself by the Commercial Traveller who sold goods to the man who was regarded as impossible.
"What," they said, "you're getting off at Midgeville? You're going to give the Jones Hardware Company a try, eh?"--and then they all started laughing and giving me the merry ha! ha! Well, I just got my grip packed and didn't say a thing and when the train slowed up for Midgeville, out I slid. "Give my love to old man Jones," one of the boys called after me, "and get yourself a couple of porous plasters and a pair of splints before you tackle him!"--and then they all gave me the ha! ha! again, out of the window as the train pulled out.
Well, I walked uptown from the station to the Jones Hardware Company. "Is Mr. Jones in the office?" I asked of one of the young fellers behind the counter. "He's in the office," he says, "all right, but I guess you can't see him," he says--and he looked at my grip. "What name shall I say?" says he. "Don't say any name at all," I says. "Just open the door and let me in."
Well, there was old man Jones sitting scowling over his desk, biting his pen in that way he has. He looked up when I came in. "See here, young man," he says, "you can't sell me any hardware," he says. "Mr. Jones," I says, "I don't want to sell you any hardware. I'm not here to sell you any hardware. I know," I says, "as well as you do," I says, "that I couldn't sell any hardware if I tried to. But," I says, "I guess it don't do any harm to open up this sample case, and show you some hardware," I says. "Young man," says he, "if you start opening up that sample case in here, you'll lose your time, that's all"--and he turned off sort of sideways and began looking over some letters.
"That's all right, Mr. Jones," I says. "That's all right. I'm here to lose my time. But I'm not going out of this room till you take a look anyway at some of this new cutlery I'm carrying."
So open I throws my sample case right across the end of his desk. "Look at that knife," I says, "Mr. Jones. Just look at it: clear Sheffield at three-thirty the dozen and they're a knife that will last till you wear the haft off it." "Oh, pshaw," he growled, "I don't want no knives; there's nothing in knives--"
Well I knew he didn't want knives, see? I knew it. But the way I opened up the sample case it showed up, just by accident so to speak, a box of those new electric burners--adjustable, you know--they'll take heat off any size of socket you like and use it for any mortal thing in the house. I saw old Jones had his eyes on them in a minute. "What's those things you got there?" he growls, "those in the box?" "Oh," I said, "that's just a new line," I said, "the boss wanted me to take along: some sort of electric rig for heating," I said, "but I don't think there's anything to it. But here, now, Mr. Jones, is a spoon I've got on this trip--it's the new Delphide --you can't tell that, sir, from silver. No, sir," I says, "I defy any man, money down, to tell that there Delphide from genuine refined silver, and they're a spoon that'll last--"
"Let me see one of those burners," says old man Jones, breaking in.
Well, sir, in about two minutes more, I had one of the burners fixed on to the light socket, and old Jones, with his coat off, boiling water in a tin cup (out of the store) and timing it with his watch.
The next day I pulled into Toledo and went and joined the other boys up to the Jefferson House. "Well," they says, "have you got that plaster on?" and started in to give me the ha! ha! again. "Oh, I don't know," I says. "I guess this is some plaster, isn't it?" and I took out of my pocket an order from old man Jones for two thousand adjustable burners, at four-twenty with two off. "Some plaster, eh?" I says.
Well, sir, the boys looked sick.
Old man Jones gets all his stuff from our house now. Oh, he ain't bad at all when you get to know him.
(II)
The well-known story told by the man who has once had a strange psychic experience.
...What you say about presentiments reminds me of a strange experience that I had myself.
I was sitting by myself one night very late, reading. I don't remember just what it was that I was reading. I think it was--or no, I don't remember what it was. Well, anyway, I was sitting up late reading quietly till it got pretty late on in the night. I don't remember just how late it was--half-past two, I think, or perhaps three--or, no, I don't remember. But, anyway, I was sitting up by myself very late reading. As I say, it was late, and, after all the noises in the street had stopped, the house somehow seemed to get awfully still and quiet. Well, all of a sudden I became aware of a sort of strange feeling--I hardly know how to describe it--I seemed to become aware of something, as if something were near me. I put down my book and looked around, but could see nothing. I started to read again, but I hadn't read more than a page, or say a page and a half--or no, not more than a page, when again all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming sense of--something. I can't explain just what the feeling was, but a queer sense as if there was something somewhere.
Well, I'm not of a timorous disposition naturally--at least I don't think I am--but absolutely I felt as if I couldn't stay in the room. I got up out of my chair and walked down the stairs, in the dark, to the dining-room. I felt all the way as if some one were following me. Do you know, I was absolutely trembling when I got into the dining-room and got the lights turned on. I walked over to the sideboard and poured myself out a drink of whisky and soda. As you know, I never take anything as a rule --or, at any rate, only when I am sitting round talking as we are now--but I always like to keep a decanter of whisky in the house, and a little soda, in case of my wife or one of the children being taken ill in the night.
Well, I took a drink and then I said to myself, I said, "See here, I'm going to see this thing through." So I turned back and walked straight upstairs again to my room. I fully expected something queer was going to happen and was prepared for it. But do you know when I walked into the room again the feeling, or presentiment, or whatever it was I had had, was absolutely gone. There was my book lying just where I had left it and the reading lamp still burning on the table, just as it had been, and my chair just where I had pushed it back. But I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. I sat and waited awhile, but I still felt nothing.
I went downstairs again to put out the lights in the dining-room. I noticed as I passed the sideboard that I was still shaking a little. So I took a small drink of whisky--though as a rule I never care to take more than one drink--unless when I am sitting talking as we are here.
Well, I had hardly taken it when I felt an odd sort of psychic feeling--a sort of drowsiness. I remember, in a dim way, going to bed, and then I remember nothing till I woke up next morning.
And here's the strange part of it. I had hardly got down to the office after breakfast when I got a wire to tell me that my mother-in-law had broken her arm in Cincinnati. Strange, wasn't it? No, not at half-past two during that night--that's the inexplicable part of it. She had broken it at half-past eleven the morning before. But you notice it was half-past in each case. That's the queer way these things go.
Of course, I don't pretend to explain it. I suppose it simply means that I am telepathic--that's all. I imagine that, if I wanted to, I could talk with the dead and all that kind of thing. But I feel somehow that I don't want to.
Eh? Thank you, I will--though I seldom take more than-- thanks, thanks, that's plenty of soda in it.
(III)
The familiar narrative in which the Successful Business
Man recounts the early struggles by which he made good.
...No, sir, I had no early advantages whatever. I was brought up plain and hard--try one of these cigars; they cost me fifty cents each. In fact, I practically had no schooling at all. When I left school I didn't know how to read, not to read good. It's only since I've been in business that I've learned to write English, that is so as to use it right. But I'll guarantee to say there isn't a man in the shoe business to-day can write a better letter than I can. But all that I know is what I've learned myself. Why, I can't do fractions even now. I don't see that a man need. And I never learned no geography, except what I got for myself off railroad folders. I don't believe a man needs more than that anyway. I've got my boy at Harvard now. His mother was set on it. But I don't see that he learns anything, or nothing that will help him any in business. They say they learn them character and manners in the colleges, but, as I see it, a man can get all that just as well in business--is that wine all right? If not, tell me and I'll give the head waiter hell; they charge enough for it; what you're drinking costs me four-fifty a bottle.
But I was starting to tell you about my early start in business. I had it good and hard all right. Why when I struck New York--I was sixteen then--I had just eighty cents to my name. I lived on it for nearly a week while I was walking round hunting for a job. I used to get soup for three cents, and roast beef with potatoes, all you could eat, for eight cents, that tasted better than anything I can ever get in this damn club. It was down somewhere on Sixth Avenue, but I've forgotten the way to it.
Well, about the sixth day I got a job, down in a shoe factory, working on a machine. I guess you've never seen shoe-machinery, have you? No, you wouldn't likely. It's complicated. Even in those days there were thirty-five machines went to the making of a shoe, and now we use as many as fifty-four. I'd never seen the machines before, but the foreman took me on. "You look strong," he said "I'll give you a try anyway."
So I started in. I didn't know anything. But I made good from the first day. I got four a week at the start, and after two months I got a raise to four-twenty-five.
Well, after I'd worked there about three months, I went up to the floor manager of the flat I worked on, and I said, "Say, Mr. Jones, do you want to save ten dollars a week on expenses?" "How?" says he. "Why," I said, "that foreman I'm working under on the machine, I've watched him, and I can do his job; dismiss him and I'll take over his work at half what you pay him." "Can you do the work?" he says. "Try me out," I said. "Fire him and give me a chance." "Well," he said, "I like your spirit anyway; you've got the right sort of stuff in you."
So he fired the foreman and I took over the job and held it down. It was hard at first, but I worked twelve hours a day, and studied up a book on factory machinery at night. Well, after I'd been on that work for about a year, I went in one day to the general manager downstairs, and I said, "Mr. Thompson, do you want to save about a hundred dollars a month on your overhead costs?" "How can I do that?" says he. "Sit down." "Why," I said, "you dismiss Mr. Jones and give me his place as manager of the floor, and I'll undertake to do his work, and mine with it, at a hundred less than you're paying now." He turned and went into the inner office, and I could hear him talking to Mr. Evans, the managing director. "The young fellow certainly has character," I heard him say. Then he came out and he said, "Well, we're going to give you a try anyway: we like to help out our employes all we can, you know; and you've got the sort of stuff in you that we're looking for."
So they dismissed Jones next day and I took over his job and did it easy. It was nothing anyway. The higher up you get in business, the easier it is if you know how. I held that job two years, and I saved all my salary except twenty-five dollars a month, and I lived on that. I never spent any money anyway. I went once to see Irving do this Macbeth for twenty-five cents, and once I went to a concert and saw a man play the violin for fifteen cents in the gallery. But I don't believe you get much out of the theatre anyway; as I see it, there's nothing to it.
Well, after a while I went one day to Mr. Evans's office and I said, "Mr. Evans, I want you to dismiss Mr. Thompson, the general manager." "Why, what's he done?" he says. "Nothing," I said, "but I can take over his job on top of mine and you can pay me the salary you give him and save what you're paying me now." "Sounds good to me," he says.
So they let Thompson go and I took his place. That, of course, is where I got my real start, because, you see, I could control the output and run the costs up and down just where I liked. I suppose you don't know anything about costs and all that--they don't teach that sort of thing in colleges--but even you would understand something about dividends and would see that an energetic man with lots of character and business in him, If he's general manager can just do what he likes with the costs, especially the overhead, and the shareholders have just got to take what he gives them and be glad to. You see they can't fire him--not when he's got it all in his own hands--for fear it will all go to pieces.
Why would I want to run it that way for? Well, I'll tell you. I had a notion by that time that the business was getting so big that Mr. Evans, the managing director, and most of the board had pretty well lost track of the details and didn't understand it. There's an awful lot, you know, in the shoe business. It's not like ordinary things. It's complicated. And so I'd got an idea that I would shove them clean out of it--or most of them.
So I went one night to see the president, old Guggenbaum, up at his residence. He didn't only have this business, but he was in a lot of other things as well, and he was a mighty hard man to see. He wouldn't let any man see him unless he knew first what he was going to say. But I went up to his residence at night, and I saw him there. I talked first with his daughter, and I said I just had to see him. I said it so she didn't dare refuse. There's a way in talking to women that they won't say no.
So I showed Mr. Guggenbaum what I could do with the stock. "I can put that dividend," I says, "clean down to zero--and they'll none of them know why. You can buy the lot of them out at your own price, and after that I'll put the dividend back to fifteen, or twenty, in two years."
"And where do you come in?" says the old man, with a sort of hard look. He had a fine business head, the old man, at least in those days.
So I explained to him where I came in. "All right," he said. "Go ahead. But I'll put nothing in writing." "Mr. Guggenbaum, you don't need to," I said. "You're as fair and square as I am and that's enough for me."
His daughter let me out of the house door when I went. I guess she'd been pretty scared that she'd done wrong about letting me in. But I said to her it was all right, and after that when I wanted to see the old man I'd always ask for her and she'd see that I got in all right.
Got them squeezed out? Oh, yes, easy. There wasn't any trouble about that. You see the old man worked up a sort of jolt in wholesale leather on one side, and I fixed up a strike of the hands on the other. We passed the dividend two quarters running, and within a year we had them all scared out and the bulk of the little shareholders, of course, trooped out after them. They always do. The old man picked up the stock when they dropped it, and one-half of it he handed over to me.
That's what put me where I am now, do you see, with the whole control of the industry in two states and more than that now, because we have the Amalgamated Tanneries in with us, so it's practically all one concern.
Guggenbaum? Did I squeeze him out? No, I didn't because, you see, I didn't have to. The way it was--well, I tell you--I used to go up to the house, see, to arrange things with him--and the way it was--why, you see, I married his daughter, see, so I didn't exactly need to squeeze him out. He lives up with us now, but he's pretty old and past business. In fact, I do it all for him now, and pretty well everything he has is signed over to my wife. She has no head for it, and she's sort of timid anyway --always was--so I manage it all. Of course, if anything happens to the old man, then we get it all. I don't think he'll last long. I notice him each day, how weak he's getting.
My son in the business? Well, I'd like him to be. But he don't seem to take to it somehow--I'm afraid he takes more after his mother; or else it's the college that's doing it. Somehow, I don't think the colleges bring out business character, do you?
X. A Study in Still Life--My Tailor
He always stands there--and has stood these thirty years--in the back part of his shop, his tape woven about his neck, a smile of welcome on his face, waiting to greet me.
"Something in a serge," he says, "or perhaps in a tweed?"
There are only these two choices open to us. We have had no others for thirty years. It is too late to alter now.
"A serge, yes," continues my tailor, "something in a dark blue, perhaps." He says it with all the gusto of a new idea, as if the thought of dark blue had sprung up as an inspiration. "Mr. Jennings" (this is his assistant), "kindly take down some of those dark blues.
"Ah," he exclaims, "now here is an excellent thing." His manner as he says this is such as to suggest that by sheer good fortune and blind chance he has stumbled upon a thing among a million.
He lifts one knee and drapes the cloth over it, standing upon one leg. He knows that in this attitude it is hard to resist him. Cloth to be appreciated as cloth must be viewed over the bended knee of a tailor with one leg in the air.
My tailor can stand in this way indefinitely, on one leg in a sort of ecstasy, a kind of local paralysis.
"Would that make up well?" I ask him.
"Admirably," he answers.
I have no real reason to doubt it. I have never seen any reason why cloth should not make up well. But I always ask the question as I know that he expects it and it pleases him. There ought to be a fair give and take in such things.
"You don't think it at all loud?" I say. He always likes to be asked this.
"Oh, no, very quiet indeed. In fact we always recommend serge as extremely quiet."
I have never had a wild suit in my life. But it is well to ask.
Then he measures me--round the chest, nowhere else. All the other measures were taken years ago. Even the chest measure is only done--and I know it--to please me. I do not really grow.
"A little fuller in the chest," my tailor muses. Then he turns to his assistant. "Mr. Jennings, a little fuller in the chest--half an inch on to the chest, please."
It is a kind fiction. Growth around the chest is flattering even to the humblest of us.
"Yes," my tailor goes on--he uses "yes" without any special meaning--"and shall we say a week from Tuesday? Mr. Jennings, a week from Tuesday, please."
"And will you please," I say, "send the bill to--?" but my tailor waves this aside. He does not care to talk about the bill. It would only give pain to both of us to speak of it.
The bill is a matter we deal with solely by correspondence, and that only in a decorous and refined style never calculated to hurt.
I am sure from the tone of my tailor's letters that he would never send the bill, or ask for the amount, were it not that from time to time he is himself, unfortunately, "pressed" owing to "large consignments from Europe." But for these heavy consignments, I am sure I should never need to pay him. It is true that I have sometimes thought to observe that these consignments are apt to arrive when I pass the limit of owing for two suits and order a third. But this can only be a mere coincidence.
Yet the bill, as I say, is a thing that we never speak of. Instead of it my tailor passes to the weather. Ordinary people always begin with this topic. Tailors, I notice, end with it. It is only broached after the suit is ordered, never before.
"Pleasant weather we are having," he says. It is never other, so I notice, with him. Perhaps the order of a suit itself is a little beam of sunshine.
Then we move together towards the front of the store on the way to the outer door.
"Nothing to-day, I suppose," says my tailor, "in shirtings?"
"No, thank you."
This is again a mere form. In thirty years I have never bought any shirtings from him. Yet he asks the question with the same winsomeness as he did thirty years ago.
"And nothing, I suppose, in collaring or in hosiery?"
This is again futile. Collars I buy elsewhere and hosiery
I have never worn.
Thus we walk to the door, in friendly colloquy. Somehow if he failed to speak of shirtings and hosiery, I should feel as if a familiar cord had broken;
At the door we part.
"Good afternoon," he says. "A week from Tuesday--yes
--good afternoon."
Such is--or was--our calm unsullied intercourse, unvaried or at least broken only by consignments from Europe.
I say it was, that is until just the other day.
And then, coming to the familiar door, for my customary summer suit, I found that he was there no more. There were people in the store, unloading shelves and piling cloth and taking stock. And they told me that he was dead. It came to me with a strange shock. I had not thought it possible. He seemed--he should have been --immortal.
They said the worry of his business had helped to kill him. I could not have believed it. It always seemed so still and tranquil--weaving his tape about his neck and marking measures and holding cloth against his leg beside the sunlight of the window in the back part of the shop. Can a man die of that? Yet he had been "going behind," they said (however that is done), for years. His wife, they told me, would be left badly off. I had never conceived him as having a wife. But it seemed that he had, and a daughter, too, at a conservatory of music --yet he never spoke of her--and that he himself was musical and played the flute, and was the sidesman of a church--yet he never referred to it to me. In fact, in thirty years we never spoke of religion. It was hard to connect him with the idea of it.
As I went out I seemed to hear his voice still saying,
"And nothing to-day in shirtings?"
I was sorry I had never bought any.
There is, I am certain, a deep moral in this. But I will not try to draw it. It might appear too obvious.
Peace, War, and Politics
XI. Germany from Within Out
The adventure which I here narrate resulted out of a strange psychological experience of a kind that (outside of Germany) would pass the bounds of comprehension.
To begin with, I had fallen asleep.
Of the reason for my falling asleep I have no doubt. I had remained awake nearly the whole of the preceding night, absorbed in the perusal of a number of recent magazine articles and books dealing with Germany as seen from within. I had read from cover to cover that charming book, just written by Lady de Washaway, under the title Ten Years as a Toady, or The Per-Hapsburgs as I Didn't Know Them. Her account of the life of the Imperial Family of Austria, simple, unaffected, home-like; her picture of the good old Emperor, dining quietly off a cold potato and sitting after dinner playing softly to himself on the flute, while his attendants gently withdrew one by one from his presence; her description of merry, boisterous, large-hearted Prince Stefan Karl, who kept the whole court in a perpetual roar all the time by asking such riddles as "When is a sailor not a sailor?" (the answer being, of course, when he is a German Prince)--in fact, the whole book had thrilled me to the verge of spiritual exhaustion.
From Lady de Washaway's work I turned to peruse Hugo von
Halbwitz's admirable book, _Easy Marks, or How the German
Government Borrows its Funds_; and after that I had read
Karl von Wiggleround's Despatches and Barnstuff's
Confidential Letters to Criminals.
As a consequence I fell asleep as if poisoned.
But the amazing thing is that, whenever it was or was not that I fell asleep, I woke up to find myself in Germany.
I cannot offer any explanation as to how this came about.
I merely state the fact.
There I was, seated on the grassy bank of a country road.
I knew it was Germany at once. There was no mistaking it. The whole landscape had an orderliness, a method about it that is, alas, never seen in British countries. The trees stood in neat lines, with the name of each nailed to it on a board. The birds sat in regular rows, four to a branch, and sang in harmony, very simply, but with the true German feeling.
There were two peasants working beside the road. One was picking up fallen leaves, and putting them into neat packets of fifty. The other was cutting off the tops of the late thistles that still stood unwithered in the chill winter air, and arranging them according to size and colour. In Germany nothing is lost; nothing is wasted. It is perhaps not generally known that from the top of the thistle the Germans obtain picrate of ammonia, the most deadly explosive known to modern chemistry, while from the bulb below, butter, crude rubber and sweet cider are extracted in large quantities.
The two peasants paused in their work a moment as they saw me glance towards them, and each, with the simple gentility of the German working man, quietly stood on his head until I had finished looking at him.
I felt quite certain, of course, that it must only be a matter of a short time before I would inevitably be arrested.
I felt doubly certain of it when I saw a motor speeding towards me with a stout man, in military uniform and a Prussian helmet, seated behind the chauffeur.
The motor stopped, but to my surprise the military man, whom I perceived to be wearing the uniform of a general, jumped out and advanced towards me with a genial cry of:
"Well, Herr Professor!"
I looked at him again.
"Why, Fritz!" I cried.
"You recognize me?" he said.
"Certainly," I answered, "you used to be one of the six
German waiters at McCluskey's restaurant in Toronto."
The General laughed.
"You really took us for waiters!" he said. "Well, well.
My dear professor! How odd! We were all generals in the
German army. My own name is not Fritz Schmidt, as you
knew it, but Count von Boobenstein. The Boobs of
Boobenstein," he added proudly, "are connected with the
Hohenzollerns. When I am commanded to dine with the
Emperor, I have the hereditary right to eat anything that
he leaves."
"But I don't understand!" I said. "Why were you in
Toronto?"
"Perfectly simple. Special military service. We were there to make a report. Each day we kept a record of the velocity and direction of the wind, the humidity of the air, the distance across King Street and the height of the C.P.R. Building. All this we wired to Germany every day."
"For what purpose?" I asked.
"Pardon me!" said the General, and then, turning the subject with exquisite tact: "Do you remember Max?" he said.
"Do you mean the tall melancholy looking waiter, who used to eat the spare oysters and drink up what was left in the glasses, behind the screen?"
"Ha!" exclaimed my friend. "But why did he drink them? Why? Do you know that that man--his real name is not Max but Ernst Niedelfein--is one of the greatest chemists in Germany? Do you realise that he was making a report to our War Office on the percentage of alcohol obtainable in Toronto after closing time?"
"And Karl?" I asked.
"Karl was a topographist in the service of his High Serenity the King Regnant of Bavaria"--here my friend saluted himself with both hands and blinked his eyes four times--"He made maps of all the breweries of Canada. We know now to a bottle how many German soldiers could be used in invading Canada without danger of death from drought."
"How many was it?" I asked.
Boobenstein shook his head.
"Very disappointing," he said. "In fact your country is not yet ripe for German occupation. Our experts say that the invasion of Canada is an impossibility unless we use Milwaukee as a base--But step into my motor," said the Count, interrupting himself, "and come along with me. Stop, you are cold. This morning air is very keen. Take this," he added, picking off the fur cap from the chauffeur's head. "It will be better than that hat you are wearing--or, here, wait a moment--"
As he spoke, the Count unwound a woollen muffler from the chauffeur's neck, and placed it round mine.
"Now then," he added, "this sheepskin coat--"
"My dear Count," I protested.
"Not a bit, not a bit," he cried, as he pulled off the chauffeur's coat and shoved me into it. His face beamed with true German generosity.
"Now," he said as we settled back into the motor and started along the road, "I am entirely at your service. Try one of these cigars! Got it alight? Right! You notice, no doubt, the exquisite flavour. It is a Tannhauser. Our chemists are making these cigars now out of the refuse of the tanneries and glue factories."
I sighed involuntarily. Imagine trying to "blockade" a people who could make cigars out of refuse; imagine trying to get near them at all!
"Strong, aren't they?" said von Boobenstein, blowing a big puff of smoke. "In fact, it is these cigars that have given rise to the legend (a pure fiction, I need hardly say) that our armies are using asphyxiating gas. The truth is they are merely smoking German-made tobacco in their trenches."
"But come now," he continued, "your meeting me is most fortunate. Let me explain. I am at present on the Intelligence Branch of the General Staff. My particular employment is dealing with foreign visitors--the branch of our service called, for short, the Eingewanderte Fremden Verfullungs Bureau. How would you call that?"
"It sounds," I said, "like the Bureau for Stuffing Up
Incidental Foreigners."
"Precisely," said the Count, "though your language lacks the music of ours. It is my business to escort visitors round Germany and help them with their despatches. I took the Ford party through--in a closed cattle-car, with the lights out. They were greatly impressed. They said that, though they saw nothing, they got an excellent idea of the atmosphere of Germany. It was I who introduced Lady de Washaway to the Court of Franz Joseph. I write the despatches from Karl von Wiggleround, and send the necessary material to Ambassador von Barnstuff. In fact I can take you everywhere, show you everything, and" --here my companion's military manner suddenly seemed to change into something obsequiously and strangely familiar--"it won't cost you a cent; not a cent, unless you care--"
I understood.
I handed him ten cents.
"Thank you, sir," he said. Then with an abrupt change back to his military manner, "Now, then, what would you like to see? The army? The breweries? The Royal court? Berlin? What shall it be? My time is limited, but I shall be delighted to put myself at your service for the rest of the day."
"I think," I said, "I should like more than anything to see Berlin, if it is possible."
"Possible?" answered my companion. "Nothing easier."
The motor flew ahead and in a few moments later we were making our arrangements with a local station-master for a special train to Berlin.
I got here my first glimpse of the wonderful perfection of the German railway system.
"I am afraid," said the station-master, with deep apologies, "that I must ask you to wait half an hour. I am moving a quarter of a million troops from the east to the west front, and this always holds up the traffic for fifteen or twenty minutes."
I stood on the platform watching the troops trains go by and admiring the marvellous ingenuity of the German system.
As each train went past at full speed, a postal train (Feld-Post-Eisenbahn-Zug) moved on the other track in the opposite direction, from which a shower of letters were thrown in to the soldiers through the window. Immediately after the postal train, a soup train (Soup-Zug) was drawn along, from the windows of which soup was squirted out of a hose.
Following this there came at full speed a beer train (Bier-Zug) from which beer bombs were exploded in all directions.
I watched till all had passed.
"Now," said the station-master, "your train is ready.
Here you are."
Away we sped through the meadows and fields, hills and valleys, forests and plains.
And nowhere--I am forced, like all other travellers, to admit it--did we see any signs of the existence of war. Everything was quiet, orderly, usual. We saw peasants digging--in an orderly way--for acorns in the frozen ground. We saw little groups of soldiers drilling in the open squares of villages--in their quiet German fashion --each man chained by the leg to the man next to him; here and there great Zeppelins sailed overhead dropping bombs, for practice, on the less important towns; at times in the village squares we saw clusters of haggard women (quite quiet and orderly) waving little red flags and calling: "Bread, bread!"
But nowhere any signs of war. Certainly not.
We reached Berlin just at nightfall. I had expected to find it changed. To my surprise it appeared just as usual. The streets were brilliantly lighted. Music burst in waves from the restaurants. From the theatre signs I saw, to my surprise, that they were playing Hamlet, East Lynne and Potash and Perlmutter. Everywhere was brightness, gaiety and light-heartedness.
Here and there a merry-looking fellow, with a brush and a pail of paste and a roll of papers over his arm, would swab up a casualty list of two or three thousand names, amid roars of good-natured laughter.
What perplexed me most was the sight of thousands of men, not in uniform, but in ordinary civilian dress.
"Boobenstein," I said, as we walked down the Linden
Avenue, "I don't understand it."
"The men?" he answered. "It's a perfectly simple matter. I see you don't understand our army statistics. At the beginning of the war we had an army of three million. Very good. Of these, one million were in the reserve. We called them to the colours, that made four million. Then of these all who wished were allowed to volunteer for special services. Half a million did so. That made four and a half million. In the first year of the war we suffered two million casualties, but of these seventy-five per cent, or one and a half million, returned later on to the colours, bringing our grand total up to six million. This six million we use on each of six fronts, giving a grand total of thirty six million.
"I see," I said. "In fact, I have seen these figures before. In other words, your men are inexhaustible."
"Precisely," said the Count, "and mark you, behind these we still have the Landsturm, made up of men between fifty-five and sixty, and the Landslide, reputed to be the most terrible of all the German levies, made up by withdrawing the men from the breweries. That is the last final act of national fury. But come," he said, "you must be hungry. Is it not so?"
"I am," I admitted, "but I had hesitated to acknowledge it. I feared that the food supply--"
Boobenstein broke into hearty laughter.
"Food supply!" he roared. "My dear fellow, you must have been reading the English newspapers! Food supply! My dear professor! Have you not heard? We have got over that difficulty entirely and for ever. But come, here is a restaurant. In with you and eat to your heart's content."
We entered the restaurant. It was filled to overflowing with a laughing crowd of diners and merry-makers. Thick clouds of blue cigar smoke filled the air. Waiters ran to and fro with tall steins of foaming beer, and great bundles of bread tickets, soup tickets, meat cards and butter coupons.
These were handed around to the guests, who sat quietly chewing the corners of them as they sipped their beer.
"Now-then," said my host, looking over the printed menu in front of him, "what shall it be? What do you say to a ham certificate with a cabbage ticket on the side? Or how would you like lobster-coupon with a receipt for asparagus?"
"Yes," I answered, "or perhaps, as our journey has made me hungry, one of these beef certificates with an affidavit for Yorkshire pudding."
"Done!" said Boobenstein.
A few moments later we were comfortably drinking our tall glasses of beer and smoking Tannhauser cigars, with an appetising pile of coloured tickets and certificates in front of us.
"Admit," said von Boobenstein good-naturedly, "that we have overcome the food difficulty for ever."
"You have," I said.
"It was a pure matter of science and efficiency," he went on. "It has long been observed that if one sat down in a restaurant and drank beer and smoked cigars (especially such a brand as these Tannhausers) during the time it took for the food to be brought (by a German waiter), all appetite was gone. It remained for the German scientists to organise this into system. Have you finished? Or would you like to take another look at your beef certificate?"
We rose. Von Boobenstein paid the bill by writing I.O.U. on the back of one of the cards--not forgetting the waiter, for whom he wrote on a piece of paper, "God bless you"--and we left.
"Count," I said, as we took our seat on a bench in the Sieges-Allee, or Alley of Victory, and listened to the music of the military band, and watched the crowd, "I begin to see that Germany is unconquerable."
"Absolutely so," he answered.
"In the first place, your men are inexhaustible. If we kill one class you call out another; and anyway one-half of those we kill get well again, and the net result is that you have more than ever."
"Precisely," said the Count.
"As to food," I continued, "you are absolutely invulnerable. What with acorns, thistles, tanbark, glue, tickets, coupons, and certificates, you can go on for ever."
"We can," he said.
"Then for money you use I.O.U.'s. Anybody with a lead pencil can command all the funds he wants. Moreover, your soldiers at the front are getting dug in deeper and deeper: last spring they were fifty feet under ground: by 1918 they will be nearly 200 feet down. Short of mining for them, we shall never get them out."
"Never," said von Boobenstein with great firmness.
"But there is one thing that I don't quite understand. Your navy, your ships. There, surely, we have you: sooner or later that whole proud fleet in the Kiel Canal will come out under fire of our guns and be sunk to the bottom of the sea. There, at least, we conquer."
Von Boobenstein broke into loud laughter.
"The fleet!" he roared, and his voice was almost hysterical and overstrung, as if high living on lobster-coupons and over-smoking of Tannhausers was undermining his nerves. "The fleet! Is it possible you do not know? Why all Germany knows it. Capture our fleet! Ha! Ha! It now lies fifty miles inland. We have filled in the canal--pushed in the banks. The canal is solid land again, and the fleet is high and dry. The ships are boarded over and painted to look like German inns and breweries. Prinz Adelbert is disguised as a brewer, Admiral von Tirpitz is made up as a head waiter, Prince Heinrich is a bar tender, the sailors are dressed up as chambermaids. And some day when Jellicoe and his men are coaxed ashore, they will drop in to drink a glass of beer, and then--pouf! we will explode them all with a single torpedo! Such is the naval strategy of our scientists! Are we not a nation of sailors?"
Von Boobenstein's manner had grown still wilder and more hysterical. There was a queer glitter in his eyes.
I thought it better to soothe him.
"I see," I said, "the Allies are beaten. One might as well spin a coin for heads or tails to see whether we abandon England now or wait till you come and take it."
As I spoke, I took from my pocket an English sovereign that I carry as a lucky-piece, and prepared to spin it in the air.
Von Boobenstein, as he saw it, broke into a sort of hoarse shriek.
"Gold! gold!" he cried. "Give it to me!"
"What?" I exclaimed.
"A piece of gold," he panted. "Give it to me, give it to me, quick. I know a place where we can buy bread with it. Real bread--not tickets--food--give me the gold--gold--for bread--we can get-bread. I am starving--gold--bread."
And as he spoke his hoarse voice seemed to grow louder and louder in my ears; the sounds of the street were hushed; a sudden darkness fell; and a wind swept among the trees of the Alley of Victory--moaning--and a thousand, a myriad voices seemed to my ear to take up the cry:
"Gold! Bread! We are starving."
Then I woke up.
XII. Abdul Aziz has His:
An Adventure in the Yildiz Kiosk
"Come, come, Abdul," I said, putting my hand, not unkindly, on his shoulder, "tell me all about it."
But he only broke out into renewed sobbing.
"There, there," I continued soothingly. "Don't cry, Abdul. Look! Here's a lovely narghileh for you to smoke, with a gold mouthpiece. See! Wouldn't you like a little latakia, eh? And here's a little toy Armenian--look! See his head come off--snick! There, it's on again, snick! now it's off! look, Abdul!"
But still he sobbed.
His fez had fallen over his ears and his face was all smudged with tears.
It seemed impossible to stop him.
I looked about in vain from the little alcove of the hall of the Yildiz Kiosk where we were sitting on a Persian bench under a lemon-tree. There was no one in sight. I hardly knew what to do.
In the Yildiz Kiosk--I think that was the name of the place--I scarcely as yet knew my way about. In fact, I had only been in it a few hours. I had come there--as I should have explained in commencing--in order to try to pick up information as to the exact condition of things in Turkey. For this purpose I had assumed the character and disguise of an English governess. I had long since remarked that an English governess is able to go anywhere, see everything, penetrate the interior of any royal palace and move to and fro as she pleases without hindrance and without insult. No barrier can stop her. Every royal court, however splendid or however exclusive, is glad to get her. She dines with the King or the Emperor as a matter of course. All state secrets are freely confided to her and all military plans are submitted to her judgment. Then, after a few weeks' residence, she leaves the court and writes a book of disclosures.
This was now my plan.
And, up to the moment of which I speak, it had worked perfectly.
I had found my way through Turkey to the royal capital without difficulty. The poke bonnet, the spectacles and the long black dress which I had assumed had proved an ample protection. None of the rude Turkish soldiers among whom I had passed had offered to lay a hand on me. This tribute I am compelled to pay to the splendid morality of the Turks. They wouldn't touch me.
Access to the Yildiz Kiosk and to the Sultan had proved equally easy. I had merely to obtain an interview with Codfish Pasha, the Secretary of War, whom I found a charming man of great intelligence, a master of three or four languages (as he himself informed me), and able to count up to seventeen.
"You wish," he said, "to be appointed as English, or rather Canadian governess to the Sultan?"
"Yes," I answered.
"And your object?"
"I propose to write a book of disclosures."
"Excellent," said Codfish.
An hour later I found myself, as I have said, in a flag-stoned hall of the Yildiz Kiosk, with the task of amusing and entertaining the Sultan.
Of the difficulty of this task I had formed no conception. Here I was at the outset, with the unhappy Abdul bent and broken with sobs which I found no power to check or control.
Naturally, therefore, I found myself at a loss. The little man as he sat on his cushions, in his queer costume and his long slippers with his fez fallen over his lemon-coloured face, presented such a pathetic object that I could not find the heart to be stern with him.
"Come, now, Abdul," I said, "be good!"
He paused a moment in his crying--
"Why do you call me Abdul?" he asked. "That isn't my name."
"Isn't it?" I said. "I thought all you Sultans were called
Abdul. Isn't the Sultan's name always Abdul?"
"Mine isn't," he whimpered, "but it doesn't matter," and his face began to crinkle up with renewed weeping. "Call me anything you like. It doesn't matter. Anyway I'd rather be called Abdul than be called a W-W-War Lord and a G-G-General when they won't let me have any say at all--"
And with that the little Sultan burst into unrestrained crying.
"Abdul," I said firmly, "if you don't stop crying, I'll go and fetch one of the Bashi-Bazouks to take you away."
The little Sultan found his voice again.
"There aren't any Bub-Bub-Bashi-Bazouks left," he sobbed.
"None left?" I exclaimed. "Where are they gone?"
"They've t-t-taken them all aw-w-way--"
"Who have?"
"The G-G-G-Germans," sobbed Abdul. "And they've sent them all to P-P-P-Poland."
"Come, come, Abdul," I said, straightening him up a little as he sat. "Brace up! Be a Turk! Be a Mohammedan! Don't act like a Christian."
This seemed to touch his pride. He made a great effort to be calm. I could hear him muttering to himself, "Allah, Illallah, Mohammed rasoul Allah!" He said this over a good many times, while I took advantage of the pause to get his fez a little straighter and wipe his face.
"How many times have I said it?" he asked presently.
"Twenty."
"Twenty? That ought to be enough, shouldn't it?" said the Sultan, regaining himself a little. "Isn't prayer helpful, eh? Give me a smoke?"
I filled his narghileh for him, and he began to suck blue smoke out of it with a certain contentment, while the rose water bubbled in the bowl below.
"Now, Abdul," I said, as I straightened up his cushions and made him a little more comfortable, "what is it? What is the matter?"
"Why," he answered, "they've all g-g-gone--"
"Now, don't cry! Tell me properly."
"They've all gone b-b-back on me! Boo-hoo!"
"Who have? Who've gone back on you?"
"Why, everybody. The English and the French and everybody--"
"What do you mean?" I asked with increasing interest. "Tell me exactly what you mean. Whatever you say I will hold sacred, of course."
I saw my part already to a volume of interesting disclosures.
"They used to treat me so differently," Abdul went on, and his sobbing ceased as he continued, "They used to call me the Bully Boy of the Bosphorus. They said I was the Guardian of the Golden Gate. They used to let me kill all the Armenians I liked and nobody was allowed to collect debts from me, and every now and then they used to send me the nicest ultimatums--Oh, you don't know," he broke off, "how nice it used to be here in the Yildiz in the old days! We used all to sit round here, in this very hall, me and the diplomats, and play games, such as 'Ultimatum, ultimatum, who's got the ultimatum.' Oh, say, it was so nice and peaceful! And we used to have big dinners and conferences, especially after the military manoeuvres and the autumn massacres--me and the diplomats, all with stars and orders, and me in my white fez with a copper tassel--and hold discussions about how to reform Macedonia."
"But you spoilt it all, Abdul," I protested.
"I didn't, I didn't!" he exclaimed almost angrily. "I'd have gone on for ever. It was all so nice. They used to present me--the diplomats did--with what they called their Minimum, and then we (I mean Codfish Pasha and me) had to draft in return our Maximum--see?--and then we all had to get together again and frame a status quo."
"But that couldn't go on for ever," I urged.
"Why not?" said Abdul. "It was a great system. We invented it, but everybody was beginning to copy it. In fact, we were leading the world, before all this trouble came. Didn't you have anything of our system in your country --what do you call it--in Canada?"
"Yes," I admitted. "Now that I come to think of it, we were getting into it. But the war has changed it all--"
"Exactly," said Abdul. "There you are! All changed! The good old days gone for ever!"
"But surely," I said, "you still have friends--the
Bulgarians."
The Sultan's little black eyes flashed with anger as he withdrew his pipe for a moment from his mouth.
"The low scoundrels!" he said between his teeth. "The traitors!"
"Why, they're your Allies!"
"Yes, Allah destroy them! They are. They've come over to our side. After centuries of fighting they refuse to play fair any longer. They're on our side! Who ever heard of such a thing? Bah! But, of course," he added more quietly, "we shall massacre them just the same. We shall insist, in the terms of peace, on retaining our rights of massacre. But then, no doubt, all the nations will."
"But you have the Germans--" I began.
"Hush, hush," said Abdul, laying his hand on my arm.
"Some one might hear."
"You have the Germans," I repeated.
"The Germans," said Abdul, and his voice sounded in a queer sing-song like that of a child repeating a lesson, "are my noble friends, the Germans are my powerful allies, the Kaiser is my good brother, the Reichstag is my foster-sister. I love the Germans. I hate the English. I love the Kaiser. The Kaiser loves me--"
"Stop, stop, Abdul," I said, "who taught you all that?"
Abdul looked cautiously around.
"They did," he said in a whisper. "There's a lot more of it. Would you like me to recite some more? Or, no, no, what's the good? I've no heart for reciting any longer." And at this Abdul fell to weeping again.
"But, Abdul," I said, "I don't understand. Why are you so distressed just now? All this has been going on for over two years. Why are you so worried just now?"
"Oh," exclaimed the little Sultan in surprise, "you haven't heard! I see--you've only just arrived. Why, to-day is the last day. After to-day it is all over."
"Last day for what?" I asked.
"For intervention. For the intervention of the United States. The only thing that can save us. It was to have come to-day, by the end of this full moon--our astrologers had predicted it--Smith Pasha, Minister under Heaven of the United States, had promised, if it came, to send it to us at the earliest moment. How do they send it, do you know, in a box, or in paper?"
"Stop," I said as my ear caught the sound of footsteps.
"There's some one coming now."
The sound of slippered feet was distinctly heard on the stones in the outer corridor.
Abdul listened intently a moment.
"I know his slippers," he said.
"Who is it?"
"It is my chief secretary, Toomuch Koffi. Yes, here he comes."
As the Sultan spoke, the doors swung open and there entered an aged Turk, in a flowing gown and coloured turban, with a melancholy yellow face, and a long white beard that swept to his girdle.
"Who do you say he is?" I whispered to Abdul.
"My chief secretary," he whispered back. "Toomuch Koffi."
"He looks like it," I murmured.
Meantime, Toomuch Koffi had advanced across the broad flagstones of the hall where we were sitting. With hands lifted he salaamed four times--east, west, north, and south.
"What does that mean?" I whispered.
"It means," said the Sultan, with visible agitation, "that he has a communication of the greatest importance and urgency, which will not brook a moment's delay."
"Well, then, why doesn't he get a move on?" I whispered.
"Hush," said Abdul.
Toomuch Koffi now straightened himself from his last salaam and spoke.
