The Guns of Europe | Page 5

Boehlen go out, and drawn by a vague resolve he excused himself, abandoning Mr. Anson who was still trifling pleasantly with the fruit, and also left the dining-room. He saw the captain receive his helmet from an obsequious waiter, put it on his head and walk into the parlor, his heavy boots as usual clanking upon the polished floor. In the final analysis it was this very act of keeping his helmet on, no matter where he was, that repelled young Scott and aroused his keen enmity.
John went to the smoking-room. Von Boehlen lingered a moment or two in the parlor, and then took his way also down the narrow passage to the smok ing-room. It was perhaps a part of the American's vague plan that he should decide suddenly to go by the same way to the parlor. Hence it was inevitable that they should meet if Captain von Boehlen kept his course an invariable one with him in the very center of the hall. John liked the center of the hall, too, particularly on that day. He was tall and strong and he knew that he would have the advantage of readiness, which everybody said was the cardinal vir tue of the Prussian army.
Just before they reached the point of contact the Prussian started back with a muttered oath of sur prise and annoyance. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword, and then came away again. John watching him closely was sure that hand and hilt would not have parted company so readily had it been a German civilian who was claiming with Captain Rudolf von Boehlen an equal share of the way.
But John saw the angry flash in the eyes of the Prussian die suddenly like a light put out by a puff of wind, and the compressed line of the lips relax. He knew that it was not the result of innate feeling, but of a mental effort made by von Boehlen, and he surmised that the fact of his being a foreigner had all to do with it. Yet he waited for the other to apologize first.
"Pardon," said the captain, "it is somewhat dark here, and as I was absorbed in thought I did not no tice you."
His English was excellent and his manner polite enough. John could do nothing less than respond in kind.
"It was perhaps my fault more than yours," he said.
The face of Captain von Boehlen relaxed yet further into a smile.
"You are an American," he said, "a member of an amiable race, our welcome guests in Europe. What could our hotels and museums do without you?"
When he smiled he showed splendid white teeth, sharp and powerful. His manner, too, had become compelling. John could not now deny its charm. Perhaps his first estimate of Captain von Boehlen had been wrong.
"It is true that we come in shoals," he responded. "Sometimes I'm not sure whether we're welcome to the general population."
"Oh, yes, you are. The Americans are the spoiled children of Europe."
"At least we are the children of Europe. The people on both sides of the Atlantic are apt to forget that. We're transplanted Europeans. The Indians are the only people of the original American stock."
"But you are not Europeans. One can always tell the difference. You speak English, but you are not English. I should never take an American for an Englishman."
"But our basis is British. Despite all the infusions of other bloods, and they've been large, Great Britain is our mother country. I feel it myself."
Von Boehlen smiled tranquilly.
"Great Britain has always been your chief enemy," he said. "You have been at war with her twice, and in your civil war, when you were in dire straits her predominant classes not only wished for your destruction, but did what they could to achieve it."
"Old deeds," said John. "The bad things of fifty or a hundred years ago are dead and buried."
But the Prussian would not have it so. Germany, he said, was the chief friend of America. Their peo ples, he insisted, were united not only by a tie of blood, but by points of view, similar in so many important cases. He seemed for some inscrutable reason anxious to convince one as young as his listener, and he em ployed a smoothness of speech and a charm of manner that John in the morning in the gallery would have thought impossible in one so stiff and haughty. The spell that this man was able to cast increased, and yet he was always conscious of a pitiless strength be hind it.
John presently found himself telling his name, how he was traveling with William Anson, older than him self, and in a way both a comrade and a tutor, how he expected to meet his uncle, James Pomeroy, a