Stories in Light and Shadow | Page 7

the laws?
They were dumb, stupid things--these papers--to him."

"But his appetite remains good, I hope?" suggested the consul.
This closed the conversation, although Karl came on many other nights,
and his toy figure quite supplanted the tall corporal of hussars in the
remote shadows of the hall. One night, however, the consul returned
home from a visit to a neighboring town a day earlier than he was
expected. As he neared his house he was a little surprised to find the
windows of his sitting-room lit up, and that there were no signs of
Trudschen in the lower hall or passages. He made his way upstairs in
the dark and pushed open the door of his apartment. To his
astonishment, Karl was sitting comfortably in his own chair, his cap off
before a student-lamp on the table, deeply engaged in apparent study.
So profound was his abstraction that it was a moment before he looked
up, and the consul had a good look at his usually beaming and
responsive face, which, however, now struck him as wearing a singular
air of thought and concentration. When their eyes at last met, he rose
instantly and saluted, and his beaming smile returned. But, either from
his natural phlegm or extraordinary self-control he betrayed neither
embarrassment nor alarm.
The explanation he gave was direct and simple. Trudschen had gone
out with the Corporal Fritz for a short walk, and had asked him to
"keep house" during their absence. He had no books, no papers,
nothing to read in the barracks, and no chance to improve his mind. He
thought the Herr Consul would not object to his looking at his books.
The consul was touched; it was really a trivial indiscretion and as much
Trudschen's fault as Karl's! And if the poor fellow had any mind to
improve,--his recent attitude certainly suggested thought and
reflection,--the consul were a brute to reprove him. He smiled
pleasantly as Karl returned a stubby bit of pencil and some greasy
memoranda to his breast pocket, and glanced at the table. But to his
surprise it was a large map that Karl had been studying, and, to his still
greater surprise, a map of the consul's own district.
"You seem to be fond of map-studying," said the consul pleasantly.
"You are not thinking of emigrating again?"
"Ach, no!" said Karl simply; "it is my cousine vot haf lif near here. I

find her."
But he left on Trudschen's return, and the consul was surprised to see
that, while Karl's attitude towards her had not changed, the girl
exhibited less effusiveness than before. Believing it to be partly the
effect of the return of the corporal, the consul taxed her with
faithlessness. But Trudschen looked grave.
"Ah! He has new friends, this Karl of ours. He cares no more for poor
girls like us. When fine ladies like the old Frau von Wimpfel make
much of him, what will you?"
It appeared, indeed, from Trudschen's account, that the widow of a
wealthy shopkeeper had made a kind of protege of the young soldier,
and given him presents. Furthermore, that the wife of his colonel had
employed him to act as page or attendant at an afternoon Gesellschaft,
and that since then the wives of other officers had sought him. Did not
the Herr Consul think it was dreadful that this American, who could
vote and make laws, should be subjected to such things?
The consul did not know what to think. It seemed to him, however, that
Karl was "getting on," and that he was not in need of his assistance. It
was in the expectation of hearing more about him, however, that he
cheerfully accepted an invitation from Adlerkreutz to dine at the
Caserne one evening with the staff. Here he found, somewhat to his
embarrassment, that the dinner was partly in his own honor, and at the
close of five courses, and the emptying of many bottles, his health was
proposed by the gallant veteran Adlerkreutz in a neat address of many
syllables containing all the parts of speech and a single verb. It was to
the effect that in his soul-friend the Herr Consul and himself was the
never-to-be- severed union of Germania and Columbia, and in their
perfect understanding was the war-defying alliance of two great nations,
and that in the consul's noble restoration of Unser Karl to the German
army there was the astute diplomacy of a great mind. He was satisfied
that himself and the Herr Consul still united in the great future, looking
down upon a common brotherhood,--the great Germanic-American
Confederation,--would feel satisfied with themselves and each other
and their never-to-be-forgotten earth- labors. Cries of "Hoch! Hoch!"

resounded through the apartment with the grinding roll of
heavy-bottomed beer-glasses, and the consul, tremulous with emotion