by Celia Hayes
Horrie looked a little taken aback by Hansi’s vehemence, so Magda explained softly, “And so we did. It’s just that some of the older settlers, they kept an interest in our homeland—for sentiment, more than any thing else.”
“Sentiment.” Hansi looked very keenly at the children. “Aye, that’s all right then. Sentiment—but we made our future and our fortunes in America. That’s where our interests truly lie; never forget that, lad.”
Magda pondered on Hansi’s words then and again, in the days that followed, puzzling out some kind of meaning, some kind of guidance. She thought at first, when Hansi proposed this journey, that it would be a homecoming; the return of the prodigals. For all those years of living in Texas, she and the other Verein settlers had always been seen as Germans, as outlanders, set apart by language and habits as clearly as the Indians, as the Mexicans like Porfirio were set aside—marked by those differences. Her husband, born in America and never having known anyplace else, even he bore the nickname of “Dutch” among his fellows in the Rangers.
They came from Germany, bearing Germany with them; their music and love of order and education. But in time that exile Germany was worn away, as the wind wears away a sandstone cliff. Only she and Hansi and Liesel remembered the old ways clearly. The new country had claimed their children; she could tell from observing Anna’s and Lottie’s frank address and bearing, the way they walked briskly, striding like women with a purpose. Such qualities were even more marked with the boys. Dolph and Peter carried themselves with the assurance of aristocrats but none of that swaggering arrogance that she saw among these men of her homeland in their elegant coats, those officers with their splendid decorations, to whom everyone deferred.
“Ma’am Becker,” Peter asked her curiously, as they settled themselves into the elegant first-class waiting room at the main Hamburg train station, “why is it so many of these fine officers have so many scars? You could have run a fine-mesh sieve through my company after four years in the War and not found half so many scars as I have seen in the last three hours.”
“From fighting duels,” Magda explained, helplessly. She was rather startled by the frequency herself. “It is quite the fashionable thing to engage in duels and sword-play, or so my brother Johann told me, when he came back to study medicine here.”
“Sword-play,” Peter murmured, absently running his right thumb along the pale line that slashed across his eyebrow and down across his cheek. “So that’s what they call it, over here. Back in Hood’s command, there’s two things we’d think of a chap scarred up like that one over there,” he nodded towards the imposingly uniformed officer across the waiting room from them, “that he was damned unlucky—sorry, Ma’am—or damned clumsy. Neither of which excited much confidence in those around him in the line.”
Magda allowed a slight, ladylike giggle to escape her lips. The gentleman to whom Peter referred was a miracle of military splendor striding impatiently up and down, all polished boots and gold braid, hung with ribbons and orders. She could imagine all his medals a-clank in symphony along with his dress sword and ornamental spurs.
She stifled another giggle. “My husband once said,” and she felt that familiar tug of grief which his memory always brought to her, “that an officer in a uniform as resplendent as that, wouldn’t move him to take two steps off of a rock ledge.”
“Well, that was Uncle Carl.” Peter’s face lit with affectionate reminiscence. “No respect for authority at all, God rest him. So, what do you think of this all now, Ma’am? Is it what you remembered?”
“I am not entirely sure,” Magda answered, thinking of how they had left Albeck in Hansi’s carts on an autumn day, and gone to Bremen to sign the Verein contract, staying in simple guest houses or camping among the hedges. She had lived better than half of her life in Texas; been courted there, married her husband, buried him and one of her children, buried her father and sister and many friends, seen to the building of two—no, three houses—and several businesses. And she had killed her husband’s worst enemy. No, Texas had made its marks on her. She looked at the other ladies in the First Class waiting room, elegant and tightly-corseted, attended by their maids and children, and wondered how many of them habitually carried a revolver in their reticules and knew how to use it, or even had the need for that knowledge anyway.
They went to the spa at Baden-Baden. Johann had recommended it for the curative properties, adding in his advisory letter that there were many amusements to be found and anyway it would be convenient to pay visits to Ulm from there. Hansi had made enquiries when he planned the grand excursion and booked rooms for them at the Stephanienbad Hotel on the park in Baden-Baden. They would stay there while Liesel took the water-cure. He and Peter and Dolph would venture to England, searching for blood-stock, cattle and horses alike, although Peter had allowed cheerfully, “Cuz will come home with some dogs—bet what you like on that, Ma’am Becker.”
Magda had acknowledged that likelihood; it was as if her son had an invisible sign on his person, inviting the halt, the lame and the hopeless of the canine breed to impose freely upon him. “Would that he would come home some day with a wife,” she said, feelingly, as Peter laughed.
“Oh, he will, Ma’am, he will! Personable, hard-working, possessed of a large land holding and not unappreciative of the ladies? He will marry! He is just not in any hurry!” And Peter gave an affectionate squeeze to her hand. “Uncle Carl was not and neither was I and you would know how well those marriages turned out! You should have no fears for my dear Cuz; he will marry when he finds the right girl.”
“One who doesn’t mind dogs and cows,” Magda sighed. “I know—he has said as much to me.”
“I believe we have arrived, Ma’am Becker.” Peter stood as the train began to slow. “Alas, I don’t think Cuz will find her here.” He whistled softly in amazement as the train cars rumbled slowly into the Baden station, a miracle and a fantasy of wrought-iron lace and sparkling clean glass, hung with bright baskets of flowers. It was a tiny place; they could look out and see green trees and meticulously groomed parkland, all around. The banks of the river were set with small ornate villas, all plastered the colors of marzipan confections: pale pink, yellow, light blue.
Hansi stepped down onto the train platform, with Liesel clinging to him as if to a rock amid a flood—which he was, in a way. Magda took her other arm. No need to see to their bags, for two porters appeared instantly with barrows as soon as Hansi snapped his fingers.
“You do that very well,” Magda whispered to him. “Very lordly, as if you had been born a First!”
“Practice,” Hansi grinned impishly over Liesel’s bonnet. “Although I have to say, these chaps are quicker off the mark than porters in the States. Must be all that talk about equality—spoils the hell out of the help!”
“Hansi, we are expected, aren’t we?” Liesel quavered. “I am really quite exhausted.”
“Yes, we are, Lise-love.” Hansi patted her hand. “They’re sending a coach for us, and a van for the luggage. I expect they’re waiting for us outside.”
They waited for a moment, allowing another party to pass from farther along the platform: an enormous retinue led by an elderly lady with improbably and garishly red hair, wheeled along in an invalid chair. Two manservants pushed the chair, and a lady’s maid carried a muff, and a shawl, and a pigskin jewelry case. Another maid led a number of small, pudgy and long-haired dogs on leashes. The dogs romped excitedly at the ends of their leashes, barking in a shrill soprano chorus and jerking the maid’s footsteps this way and that. As this procession passed by, the elderly lady called out a harsh command in a language none of them recognized. In response, one of the manservants lifted the fattest of the dogs into her lap. The lady and her servitors were followed by a dozen porters with handcarts and barrows, piled high with trunks, boxes and cases, most all of them expensively covered in leather and adorned with a discrete gold crest.
“I wonder where she is going.” Dolph easily sw
ung his little valise over his shoulder, declining their porter’s offer to add it to the pile in his barrow with a swift shake of his head.
“To the graveyard in several easy steps, by the look of her,” Peter answered with cynical cheer. “Looks like she is taking most of her trash with her, too.”
Both Anna and Magda shot warning looks at their menfolk. “Really,” Magda said, “she did not look as old as all that. I wonder what that language was that she spoke and who she is?”
“Sounded like Russian,” Hansi observed, unexpectedly. “The Tsar’s grandmother, I expect. Baden has always attracted the ton and the nobility.”
The Richters and the Beckers followed slowly after the old lady’s retinue; slow going, even if everyone else on the platform gave way. Magda was intrigued to see that many of them bowed or curtsied to the old lady, and the station master himself came forward and spoke to her most respectfully.
In the station forecourt there were carriages waiting on the new arrivals. The old lady was being helped into the grandest of them; an amusing spectacle, with all the dogs jumping about like furry wind-up toys. One of them escaped in the melée, the old lady shrieked imprecations and instructions as her servants, and the porters instantly dropped whatever they were doing and gave chase. The dog was agile and faster than might have been expected, given its short bandy legs and podgy form. It ran with happy energy, ears and long fur flapping and the leash trailing loose after, seeming to look over its shoulder and laughing at those in fruitless pursuit. Magda’s breath caught in her throat, for the station forecourt was busy, full of horses and heavy wagon wheels, and no place for a small plump lapdog. In another moment it would run out into the road, past Hansi and the children. As it did, Dolph stepped onto the trailing leash. The running dog jerked up short, suddenly arrested in midstride. As Dolph scooped it up, one of the maids came running up, gasping out thanks and apologies. Dolph handed her the dog and from the carriage the elderly lady nodded regally.
Dolph sketched a bow in her direction, just as a dapper young man came up to them, saying, “Herr Richter and party, for the Stephanienbad Hotel? Of course, right this way, if you please.” In hardly any time at all, he had seen them into another carriage, their collection of luggage loaded away while the elderly lady’s staff and baggage were still being sorted out.
“It is the Princess Cherkevsky,” the dapper young man explained, as they bowled away from the station forecourt, “a distant connection of Russian royal family. She is accustomed to spending summer here in Baden-Baden. Spring in Paris, winter in Italy, I believe.”
“Does she ever spend any time in Russia?” Hansi asked, jovially.
The dapper young man gave a delicate shudder. “I don’t believe the Princess cares very much for Russia, sir. She is only one of them by marriage to the Prince, so they say. It was kind of the young sir to retrieve her dog—she thinks much of her pets. They travel with her, everywhere—even into the baths!”
“Our pleasure,” Hansi rumbled; he seemed enormously amused. Magda had a mental picture of that herd of pot-bellied, bandy-legged little dogs, swimming in the hot-baths in constellation around their mistress. She met her son’s eyes and knew that he was thinking the same thing.
The Stephanienbad Hotel sat in the middle of a park of trees, a grand and ornate pile of towers and galleries.
“I shall be glad to stay here for a while,” Liesel said, fretfully. “It seems like we would never stop traveling.”
It seemed a busy place; Magda suddenly felt very tired herself. How could that be, when she had been sitting all day in the train? Yet she felt even more exhausted than if she had been carrying muck and digging in her vegetable garden all day. She and Liesel were conducted to a comfortable settee in the lobby, deep in a window embrasure full of potted ferns and ornamental palms, while their luggage was brought up and Hansi settled on their rooms. He had strict requirements as regards their rooms; that they all be adjacent, connecting into a single suite if possible. It took some few minutes for those wishes to be accommodated, and while his family waited the children chattered excitedly in English. Christian and Harry raced across the lobby; they had the energy that their elders lacked. Horrie looked around with the studied air of a boy trying to look older and worldlier than he really was, while Grete and Lottie teased him affectionately.
“. . . Becker and Richter,” remarked a voice close by, in German, and Magda startled, alerted by mention of her name. Two men stood nearby, in plain livery coats; they must be hotel staff, servitors. “American,” continued the voice. “He’s a cattle baron, from Texas. Rich as Croesus, so they told me when he made the booking. Don’t expect he’ll be too demanding, these self-made men usually aren’t.”
“Rotten tippers, though,” remarked the other man, “but then he might give you some inside hints about cattle markets!” Magda realized from the manner in which they spoke so freely, that they didn’t expect what they said to be understood. All those two men observed were the children speaking in English, knew that their family was from America. She thought she might laugh, at how readily they assumed that none of the family understood German. But then the second man drawled, “So, who’s the fat cow and the black crow?” Magda listened in horror to the first man’s reply, realizing that the men spoke so slightingly of herself and Liesel, thinking that they did not understand although they sat within clear hearing.
“The fat cow is his wife and the black crow is a sister-in-law. You know the drill; how the poor relation dances constant attendance!”
Liesel gasped, and Magda felt as if she had been slapped. How dare he speak so rudely, so insolently! How stupid did he think they were? She looked sideways at Liesel, whose eyes were full of tears. She was not fat, only a little plump. And Magda wore black like many another women, for mourning the man who meant all the world to her! How dare those men make mockery of that! Black crow, indeed!
Magda’s chin went up; she couldn’t abide that sort of thoughtless cruelty. Back in Friedrichsburg, Charley Nimitz would never allow his employees to speak of guests so slightingly in their very faces! Almost without thought, the perfect response to it sprang fully armored into her mind, like Athena from Zeus’ forehead.
“Please, you,” she said in English, “we would like some tea, please.”
“Yes, madam,” the first one straightened to attention. As soon as she saw that, she switched to precise and casual German, adding, “The fat cow and this black crow would like our tea served here, while we wait for our rooms to be ready, if that is at all possible.”
She relished the expression on their faces for quite some time, that look of sudden realization and horror. It was cruel and unladylike to take such savage pleasure in their discomfiture, but she told herself they richly deserved it. And the tea was very good. It appeared almost instantly. The servitor brought a plate of little jam tarts and asked, in a trembling voice, if everything was satisfactory.
“Yes it is, quite,” Magda answered with composure. Liesel did not touch the tarts, but the children enjoyed them enormously.
Chapter Nineteen: Dreaming Under Summer Skies
The staff of the Stephanienbad set aside a generous suite of rooms for them on the first floor for Hansi’s and Magda’s family.
“Perhaps they are just grateful that we did not bring as many servants as did the Princess Cherkevsky,” Anna ventured.
Hansi laughed. “Or that your aunt did not make complaint to the management about those men of theirs who did not think we understood German.”
“You should have, Magda,” Liesel said tearfully from where she lay with her feet up and a handkerchief moistened with rosewater across her brow. The exhaustion of a long day’s travel, capped by overhearing such rude remarks, had brought on a sudden terror-fit. She had clutched Magda’s hand with painful strength, until they were shown to their rooms. “You should have reported them for their appalling bad manners! They should have been given the sack!”
“I suppose,” Magda a
llowed, “but this way, they have learned a very salutary lesson. And I can remind them of it, each time I see them or they see me, merely by bidding them in German to do some errand for me. And each time, they are reminded that I could have made a complaint to the hotelier—but I didn’t. I expect that they shall give exemplary service, do you not agree, Liesel?”
“Good God,” Peter murmured to Dolph, “and they claim that it is Indian women who practice the most refined tortures upon their captives. I wouldn’t have believed that, until now!”
“It is not vengefulness or cruelty,” Magda insisted primly, “merely a correction of incompetence and bad manners. Really, you must give people credit for the capacity to learn and improve.”
“Whatever you say, Mama.” Dolph leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Crack your whip and watch your slaves fall to! Are we going to dine in our rooms tonight, or go to the dining room? It looks very fine,” he added, as Lottie, Grete and Horrie chorused their eagerness for the dining room.
“You may,” Magda answered.
Hansi added, “I think we will eat in our room and turn in early. You young pups may do what you like; just don’t wake us when you return!”
“It was a lovely place,” Lottie reminisced to Magda, “such a beautiful, beautiful town—every prospect as lovely as a set for a stage play! One almost expected the chorus and ballet to appear from out of the wings, and commence to sing and dance. Such lovely gardens and baskets of flowers everywhere! My favorite walk was the Lichtenthaler Allee and being able to look into the gardens of all those lovely houses. Almost as entertaining as sitting in the public square listening to music. Every afternoon, such beautiful music under the sycamore trees! How horrible to think of how we have been at war with them for these last few years, Mama—when I found everyone so kind, so hospitable! Auntie Liesel began her course of treatment almost at once, didn’t she?”