Old Fred was more cheerful than his daughter had known him to be for a long, long time; and though her timid heart was oppressed by the strange place and by strange thoughts concerning it, she felt a moment’s gladness that they had come.
“Jake Helmholz is a cholly feller,” Mr. Hitzel went on, chuckling. “He gits along good down here. Says Villa ain’t nefer come in hundert and fifty miles. He ain’t afrait of Villa, besites. He seen him once; he shook hants nice, he said. Dinnertime, Jake Helmholz he’s got a fine supp’ice to show us, he says.”
“You mean something he’s having cooked for us for dinner as a surprise, papa?”
“No; he gits us a Cherman dinner, he says; but it ain’t a supp’ice to eat. He says ‘You chust wait,’ he says to me. ‘You’ll git a supp’ice for dinner. It’s goin’ to be the supp’ice of your life,’ he says; ‘but it ain’t nutting to eat,’ he says. ‘It’s goin’ to be a supp’ice for Miss Bairta, too,’ Jake says. ‘She’ll like it nice, too,’ he says.”
But Bertha did not care for surprises; she looked anxious. “I wish he wouldn’t have a surprise for us,” she said. “I’m afraid of finding one every minute anyhow, in the wash-bowl or somewhere. I know I’ll go crazy the first time I see a tarantula!”
“Oh, it ain’t goin’ to be no bug,” her father assured her. “Jake says it’s too fine a climate for much bugs; he ain’t nefer worry none about bugs. He says it’s a supp’ice we like so much it tickles us putty near dead!” Bertha frowned involuntarily, wishing that her father had not used the word dead just then; she felt Mexico ominous round her, and even that intermittent cockcrow failed to reassure her as a homely and familiar sound. Mexico itself was surprising enough for her; even the appearance of her semi-relative, the landlord Helmholz, had been a surprise to her, and she wished that he had not prepared anything additional. Her definite fear was that his idea might prove to be something barbaric and improper in the way of native dances; and she had a bad afternoon, not needing to go outside of her room to find it. But a little while after the sharp sunset the husk-colored chambermaid brought in a lamp, and Mr. Hitzel followed, shouting wheezily. He had discovered the surprise.
“Hoopee!” he cried. “Come look! Bairta, come down! It’s here! Come down, see who!” He seized her wrist, hauling her with him, Bertha timorous and reluctant. “Come look! It’s here, settin’ at our dinner table; it’s all fixed in the garten waitin’. Hoopee! Hoopee!”
And having thus partly urged and partly led her down the stairs he halted her in the trellised entrance of Mr. Helmholz’s incongruous garden, a walled inclosure with a roof of black night. Half a dozen oil lamps left indeterminate yet definitely unfamiliar the shapings of foliage, scrawled in gargoyle shadows against the patched stucco walls; but one of the lamps stood upon a small table which had been set for three people to dine, and the light twinkled there reassuringly enough upon commonplace metal and china, and glossed amber streaks brightly up and down slender long bottles. It made too — not quite so reassuringly — a Rembrandt sketch of the two men who stood waiting there — little, ragged-faced, burnt-dry Helmholz, and a biggish young man in brown linen clothes with a sturdy figure under them. His face was large, yet made of shining and ruddy features rather small than large; he was ample yet compact; bulkily yet tightly muscular everywhere, suggesting nothing whatever of grace, nevertheless leaving to a stranger’s first glance no possibility to doubt his capacity for immense activity and resistance. Most of all he produced an impression of the stiffest sort of thickness; thickness seemed to be profoundly his great power. This strong young man was Mr. Helmholz’s surprise for Bertha and her father.
The latter could not get over it. “Supp’ice!” he cried, laughing loudly in his great pleasure. “‘I got a supp’ice for you and Miss Bairta,’ he tells me. ‘Comes efening dinnertime you git a supp’ice,’ Jake says. Look, Bairta, what for a supp’ice he makes us! You nefer seen him before. Guess who it is. It’s Louie!”
“Louie?” she repeated vacantly.
“Louie Schlotterwerz!” her father shouted. “Your own cousin! Minna’s Ludwig! Y’efer see such a fine young feller? It’s Louie!”
Vociferating, he pulled her forward; but the new cousin met them half-way and kissed Bertha’s hand with an abrupt gallantry altogether matter-of-fact with him, but obviously confusing to Bertha. She found nothing better to do than to stare at her hand, thus saluted, and to put it behind her immediately after its release, whereupon there was more hilarity from her father.
“Look!” he cried. “She don’t know what to do! She don’t seen such manners from young fellers in Cincinneti; I should took her to Chermany long ago. Sit down! Sit down! We eat some, drink cless Rhine wine and git acquainted.”
“Yes,” said Helmholz. “Eat good. You’ll find there’s worse places than Mexico to come for German dishes; it’ll surprise you. Canned United States soup you git, maybe, but afterworts is Wiener Schnitzel and all else German. And if you got obyeckshuns to the way my waiters look out for you, why, chust hit ’em in the nose once, and send for me!”
He departed as the husk-colored servitress and another like her set soup before his guests. Schlotterwerz had not yet spoken distinguishably, though he had murmured over Bertha’s hand and laughed heartily with his uncle. But his expression was amiable, and Bertha after glancing at him timidly began: “Do you—” Then blushing even more than before she turned to her father. “Does he — does Cousin Ludwig speak English?”
Mr. Hitzel’s high good humor increased all the time, and having bestowed upon his nephew a buffet of approval across the little table—” Speak Eng-lish?” he exclaimed. “Speaks it as good as me and you! He was four years in Eng-land, different times. Speaks English, French, Mexican — Spanish, you call it, I guess — I heert him speak it to Jakie Helmholz. Speaks all leng-witches. Cherman, Louie speaks it too fest.”
Schlotterwerz laughed. “I’m afraid Uncle Fritz is rather vain, Cousin Bertha,” he said; and she was astonished to hear no detectable accent in his speech, though she said afterward that his English reminded her more of a Boston professor who had been one of her teachers in school than of anything else she could think of. “Your papa and I had a little talk before dinner, in German,” Schlotterwerz went on. “At least, we attempted it. Your papa had to stop frequently to think of words he had forgotten, and sometimes he found it necessary to ask me the meaning of an idiom which I introduced into our conversation. He assured me that you spoke German with difficulty, Cotisin Bertha; but, if you permit me to say it, I think he finds himself more comfortable in the English tongue.”
Mr. Hitzel chuckled, not abashed; then he groaned. “No, I ain’t! A feller can’t remember half what his olt lengwitch is; yet all the same time he like to speak it, and maybe he gits so’s he can’t speak neither one if he don’t look out! Feller can hear plenty Cherman in Cincinneti.” His expression clouded with a reminiscence of pain. “Well, I tell you, Louie, I am gled to git away from there. I couldn’t stood the U. S. no longer. It’s too much! I couldn’t swaller it no longer!”
“I should think not,” Louie agreed sympathetically. “Many others are like you, Uncle Fritz; they’re crossing the frontier every day. That’s part of my business here, as I mentioned.”
Old Fred nodded. “Louie tellss me he comes here about copper mines,” he said to Bertha; “for after-the-war bissnuss. Cherman gufment takes him off the navy a while once, and he’s come also to see if Chermans from the U. S. which comes in Mexico could git back home to fight for the olt country. Louie’s got plenty on his hants. You can see he’s a smart feller, Bairta!”
“Yes, papa,” she said meekly; but her cousin laughed and changed the subject.
“How are things in your part of the States?” he asked. “Pretty bad?”
“So tough I couldn’t stood ’em, ain’t I tolt you?” Mr. Hitzel responded with sudden vehemence. “It’s too much! I tell you I hat to hate to walk on the streets my own city! I tell you, the United State
s iss Eng-lish lovers! I don’t want to go back in the U. S. long as I am a lifin’ man! The U. S. hates you if you are from Chermans. Yes, it’s so! If the U. S. is goin’ to hate me because I am from Chermans, well, by Gott, I can hate the U. S.!”
Bertha interposed: “Oh, no! Papa, you mustn’t say that.”
The old man set down the wine-glass he was tremulously lifting to his lips and turned to her. “Why? Why I shouldn’t say it? Look once: Why did the U. S. commence from the beginning packin’ on Chermany? And now why is it war against Chermany? Ammunitions!
So Wall Street don’t git soaked for Eng-lish bonds! So bullet makers keep on gittin’ quick-rich. Why don’t I hate the U.. S. because it kills million Chermans from U. S. bullets, when it was against the law all time to send — bullets for the Eng-lish to kill Chermans? Ain’t it so, Louie?”
But the young man shook his head. He seemed a little I amused by his uncle’s violent earnestness, and probably he was amused too by the old fellow’s interpretation of international law. “No, Uncle Fritz,” he said. “I think we may admit — between ourselves at least, and in Mexico — we may admit that the Yankees can hardly be blamed for selling munitions to anybody who can buy them.”
Mr. Hitzel sat dumfounded. “You don’t blame ’em?” he cried. “You are Cherman offizier, and you don’t—”
“Not at all,” said Schlotterwerz. “It’s what we should do ourselves under the same circumstances. We always — have done so, in fact. Of course we take the opposite — point of view diplomatically, but we have no real quarrel with the States upon the matter of munitions. All that is propaganda for the proletariat.” He laughed indulgently. “The proletariat takes enormous meals of propaganda; supplying the fodder is a great and expensive industry!”
Mr. Hitzel’s expression was that of a person altogether nonplused; he stared at this cool nephew of his, and said nothing. But Bertha had begun to feel less embarrassed than she had been at first, and she spoke with some assurance.
“What a beautiful thing it would be if nobody at all made bullets,” she said. “If there wasn’t any ammunition — why, then—”
“Why, then,” said the foreign cousin, smiling, “we should again have to fight with clubs and axes.”
“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “I mean if there wouldn’t be any fighting at all.”
He interrupted her, laughing. “When is that state of the universe to arrive?”
“Oh, it could!” she protested earnestly. “The people don’t really want to fight each other.”
“No; that is so, perhaps,” he assented.
“Well, then, why couldn’t it happen that there wouldn’t ever be any more fighting?”
“Because,” said Schlotterwerz, “because though peoples might not fight, nations always will. Peoples must be kept nations, for one reason, so that they will fight.”
“Oh! “Bertha cried.
“Yes!” said her cousin emphatically; he had grown serious. “If war dies, progress dies. War is the health of nations.”
“You mean war is good?” Bertha said incredulously.
“War is the best good!”
“You mean war when you have to fight to defend your country?”
“I mean war.”
She looked at him with wide eyes that comprehended only the simplest matters and comprehended the simplest with the most literal simplicity.
“But the corpses,” she said faintly. “Is it good for them?”
“What?” said her cousin, staring now in turn.
Bertha answered him. “War is killing people. Well, if you knew where the spirits went — the spirits that were in the corpses that get killed — if you knew for certain that they all went to heaven, and war would only be sending them to a good place — why, then perhaps you’ could say war is good. You can’t say it till you are certain that it is good for all the corpses.”
“Colossal!” the young officer exclaimed, vaguely annoyed. “Really, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m afraid it sounds like some nonsense you caught from Yankeedollarland. We must forget all that now, when you are going to be a good German. Myself, I speak of humanity. War is necessary for the progress of humanity. There can be no advance for humanity unless the most advanced nation leads it. To lead it the most advanced nation must conquer the others. To conquer them it must make war.”
“But the Germans!” Bertha cried. “The Germans say they are the most advanced, but they claim they didn’t make the war. Papa had letters and letters from Germany, and they all said they were attacked. That’s what so much talk was about at home in Cincinnati. Up to the Lusitania the biggest question of all was about which side made the war.”
“They all made it,” said Schlotterwerz. “War was inevitable, and that nation was the cleverest which chose its own time for it and struck first.”
Bertha was dismayed. “But we always — always—”
She faltered. “We claimed that the war was forced on Germany by the English.”
“It was inevitable,” her cousin repeated. “It was coming. Those who did not know it were stupid. War is always going to come; and the most advanced nation will always be prepared for it. By such means it will first conquer, then rule all the others. Already we are preparing for the next war. Indeed, we are fighting this one, I may say, with a view to the next, and the peace we make will really be what one now calls ‘jockeying for position’ for the next war.
“Let us put aside all this talk of ‘Who began the war,’ and accusations and defenses in journalism and oratory; all this nonsense about international law, which doesn’t exist, and all the absurdities about mercy. Nature has no mercy; neither has the upward striving in man. Let us speak like adult people, frankly. We are three blood relations, in perfect sympathy. You have fled from the cowardly hypocrisy of the Yankees, and I am a German officer. Let us look only at the truth. What do we see? That life is war and war is the glory of life, and peace is part of war. In peace we work. It is work behind the lines, and though the guns may be quiet for the time, our frontiers are always our front lines. Look at the network of railways we had built in peace up to the Belgian frontier. We were ready, you see. That is why we are winning. We shall be ready again and win again when the time comes, and again after that. The glorious future belongs all to Germany.”
Bertha had not much more than touched the food before her, though she had been hungry when they sat down; and now she stopped eating altogether, letting her hands drop into her lap; where they did not rest, however, for her fingers were clutched and unclutched nervously as she listened. Her father continued to eat, but not heartily; he drank more than he ate; he said nothing; and during moments of silence his heavy breathing became audible. The young German was unaware that his talk produced any change in the emotional condition of his new-found relatives; he talked on, eating almost vastly, himself, but drinking temperately.
He abandoned the great subject for a time, and told them of his mother and brothers, all in war work except Gustave, who, as the Hitzels knew, had been killed at the Somme. Finally, when Cousin Louie had eaten as much as he could he lit a cigar taken from an embroidered silk case which he carried, and offered one to his uncle. Old Fred did not lift his eyes; he shook his head and fumbled in one of his waistcoat pockets.
“No,” he said in a husky voice. “I smoke my own I brought from Cincinneti.”
“As you like,” Schlotterwerz returned. “Mine come from Havana.” He laughed and added, “By secret express!”
“You ain’t tell us,” Mr. Hitzel said, his voice still husky— “you ain’t tell us yet how long you been in Mexico.”
“About fourteen months, looking out for the commercial future and doing my share to make the border interesting at the present time for those Yankees you hate so properly, Uncle Fritz.”
Hitzel seemed to ruminate feebly. “You know,” he said, “you know I didn’t heert from Minna since Feb’- wary; she ain’t wrote me a letter. Say once, how do the Cherm
an people feel toward us that is from Chermans in the U. S. — the Cherman-Americans.”
His nephew grunted. “What would you expect?” he inquired. “You, of course, are exempt; you have left the country in disgust, because you are a true German. But the people at home will never forgive the German-Americans. It is felt that they could have kept America out of this war if they had been really loyal. It was expected of them; but they were cowardly, and they will lose by it when the test comes.”
“Test?” old Fred repeated vacantly.
The nephew made a slight gesture with his right hand, to aid him in expressing the obviousness of what he said. “Call it the German test of the Monroe Doctrine. Freedom of the seas will give Germany control of the seas, of course. The Panama Canal will be internationalized, and the States will be weakened by their approaching war with Japan, which is inevitable. Then will come the test of the Monroe Doctrine! We have often approached it, but it will be a much better time when England is out of the way and the States have been exhausted by war with Japan.”
Bertha interposed: “Would England want to help the United States?”
“Not out of generosity,” Schlotterwerz laughed. “For her own interest — Canada.” He became jocularly condescending and employed a phrase which Bertha vaguely felt to be somewhat cumbersome and unnatural. “My fair cousin,” he said, “listen to some truth, my fair cousin. No nation ever acts with generosity. Every government encourages the proletariat to claim such virtues, but it has never been done and never will be done. See what the Yankees are claiming: They go to war ‘to make the world safe for democracy.’ One must laugh! They enter the war not for democracy; not to save France nor to save England; not to save international law! Neither is it to save Wall Street millionaires — though all that is excellent for the proletariat and brings splendid results. No, my fair cousin, the Yankees never did anything generous in their whole history; it isn’t in the blood. You are right to hate them, because they are selfish not from a glorious policy, like the great among the Germans, but out of the meanness of their crawling hearts. They went to war with us because they were afraid for their own precious skins, later!”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 489