Villa Elsa | Page 6

the Teuton threshold, and might be considered one bristling aspect or cause of the ungenial development of the social spirit in Germany. Cave canem can hardly be called a suitable first attraction toward the spread of hospitality. He feared he was going to be bitten and wished his welcome had not been complicated with shudders.
The entrance to Villa Elsa consisted of a hallway swimming in heady odors from the strong cooking in the adjacent kitchen. Kirtley stood for a moment stifled. But he was to become more used to the lusty smells that roam about, presumptuous and fortifying, in German households and of which, indeed, all German existence is resolutely redolent. Strength, whether in barking dogs or fumes or what-not, appeals to the race.
In the passage-way, too, Gard was struck by the presence of various weapons, and shields, hunting horns, sundry pairs of large boots, military or shooting garments, belts loaded with cartridges. It seemed almost like the combative entry to some museum of armor. Taken together with the embattled dog, it suggested a defended fortress rather than a peaceful fireside.
"How pugnacious!" Gard declared to himself.
In the entry Ernst was called, and he came promptly forth, a smiling lad of fifteen, with a musing face, his thick light hair thrown back and run through meditatively by his fingers. He conducted Gard up two flights to a good-sized but snug room where he was to abide. A linden tree courted the window panes with its green branches.
Just the place for a fellow who wants to get away from the world and read!--Kirtley thought.
On his nightstand lay, with characteristic Teuton foresight, the names and addresses of a language teacher and of a music teacher who were duly "recommending themselves" to him in the German idiom. Lists of purchasable text books and musical editions from houses which, in the thoroughly informed Teuton manner, had got wind of his coming, also opened before him.
"They evidently expect me to begin to-morrow morning. No loss of time." He laughed to himself.
His trunk and satchel were in his room in a few minutes with all the certainty and punctuality of the imperial-royal service. "Essen fertig!" was soon vociferated up the stairway by the cook Tekla, whose bulky young form Gard had glimpsed in the kitchen. Not sure of being summoned he did not emerge until Ernst tapped on the door--
"Meester Kirtley, please come to eating."
At table the elder son was introduced--Rudolph, called Rudi, a youth of about Gard's age. There was an unseemly scar on his face and something oblique in his look. Engineering was given as his profession, but he affected the German military strut and was forward and crammed with ready-made conclusions on most subjects. But Herr Bucher reigned here as elsewhere about Villa Elsa as absolute master. He alone spoke with authority. Reverence was first of all due him. Gard soon saw how the wife and children, notwithstanding their stirring presences, were on a secondary plane. How different in the land where he had come from where they are quite free to rule in the house! The sturdy Frau was submissive, energetically helpful. But in her husband's absence she assumed his stentorian command.
The manner of eating was frankly informal and ungainly. Evidences of sharp discipline one moment; the next, awkward short-cuts. The Germans have never been able to harmonize these extremes into a medium of easy formality or sightly smoothness. At the Bucher table each one reached across for the food with scarce an apology--a plan jerkily interrupted at times by Tekla, who stuck things at Gard as if she were going to hit him. The strong provender heaped up in abundance, rank in smell and usually unappetizing in color, interfered at first with his hunger. And the drinking was, of course, of a copiousness he had little dreamed of.
The whole effect created a distinctly unsympathetic impression. It ran full tilt against Gard's anticipations. Rebner had led him to expect always the best among the Germans. Were they not the most advanced of humans? Were they not the patterns whom he should model himself after in the laudatory desire for self-improvement? He was naturally curious to see the young lady of the household, all the more as he wondered how she would blend into this blunt picture. She did not appear and he heard no reference to her. But there was a vacant place.
Much struggling occurred over the mutual endeavors to carry on conversation. With the English which the sons had learned and with Gard's German which he found a strange article on its native ground, headway was made after a fashion. His bloodless American college variety of the language was very weak to buffet about in these billows of idioms and colloquialisms.
The family, in its emphatic substantiality, was most friendly and eager to