Part 6

Your mother's prayers accompany you. You have gone through a great deal and suffered very much for one of your years. To let you hear something pleasant at the very start, I will tell you of the children. They are very well. This week I convinced myself with my own eyes that they have a good home with Pastor Mohaupt. Albrecht is splendid. Bernhard, you know, is more like his mother and always has been a quiet child. But he seemed more alert and more talkative. The life in the pastor's house and on the farm seems to please him. Pastor Mohaupt thinks both boys are by no means untalented. He has already begun to give them lessons in Latin. Little Annemarie asked me very timidly about her mother, but especially about you. She spoke of you often. I told the children there was a medical congress in New York or Washington, where they would at last make an end of that dreadful disease, consumption. My dear child, do come back soon to this dear old Europe.

I had a long talk with Doctor Binswanger. He told me your wife's trouble is hereditary. It was in her all the time and would certainly have cropped out, sooner or later. He spoke of your work, too, dear child, and thought you ought not allow yourself to be crushed. Four or five years of hard work, he said, would make up for your set-back.

Dear Dietrich, listen to your old mother and put your trust in our loving Father in heaven. I think you are an atheist. Just laugh at your old mother. But believe me, we are nothing without God's help and mercy. Pray sometimes. It won't do any harm. I know how you reproach yourself on Angèle's account. Binswanger says you may have a perfectly easy conscience. And if you pray, believe me, God will remove every thought of guilt from your harassed soul. You are only thirty. I am seventy. From the experience of the forty years more that I have, I tell you, your life can still turn out so that some day you will scarcely have a recollection of all you are now suffering. You will remember the facts; but you will try in vain to recall the feelings of anguish with which they are now connected in your mind. I am a woman. I was fond of Angèle. And yet I could observe you two together perfectly objectively. Believe me, there were times when she would have driven any man desperate.

* * * * *

The end of the letter was all motherly tenderness. Frederick saw himself at his mother's sewing-table by the window, and in his thoughts kissed her hair, her forehead, her hands.

When he looked up, he heard the steward remonstrating with the American and heard the American say in good German:

"The captain's a donkey."

The word had the effect of an electric shock. The next instant another pile of matches sent up a wavering flare in the gloomy, terrifying twilight.

Frederick mentally cut out the young man's cerebrum and cerebellum for an anatomical examination, proceeding strictly according to the rules of dissection, as he had so frequently done in actuality. He hunted for the centre of stupidity, which undoubtedly composed the American's whole soul, though his impudence, which he possessed in a rare degree, may also have had its seat in the brain. Frederick had to laugh. In his amusement he realised that little Ingigerd Hahlström no longer had any power over him, less, perhaps than, for example, the dark Jewess from Odessa, whom he had seen for the first time only a quarter of an hour before.

Captain von Kessel entered. He greeted Frederick with a slight nod of his head and seated himself at a table beside a lady, with whom he was acquainted, apparently. The American coxcomb and the pretty Canadian exchanged glances. She was languishing in her easy-chair, pale but coquettish. Frederick set her down as a woman of unusual southern beauty--straight nose, quivering nostrils, heavy, nobly arched eyebrows, black as her hair and the shadowy down over her fine, expressive, twitching lips. Her gestures had the weary grace of a Spaniard. She was laughing, and her long, slim form stretched on the chair shook. Her admirer, with a comic expression of seriousness, was again building a little pile of matches. In her weak condition she was unable to resist the impulse to laugh, and every now and then hid her face behind a black lace shawl.

It was an exciting moment when the American, in defiance of the Captain's presence, again made ready for his dangerous play.

Von Kessel, broad and ponderous and somewhat too short-legged, seemed out of proportion in the dainty parlour. He was speaking quietly with his lady. From the expression of his face it was evident that the weather was giving him cause to be serious. Suddenly the matches flared up. Now the captain's calm St. Bernard head turned slightly, and a voice said in a tone not to be misunderstood:

"Put that fire out!"

Frederick had never heard an order from a man's lips so incisive, so truly commanding, so fearful. The American turned pale and in the twinkling of an eye smothered the flame. The beautiful Canadian closed her eyes. But the captain, as if nothing had occurred, continued to converse with his lady.

XVIII

Soon after, Frederick was in the barbershop getting a shave.

"Wretched weather," observed the barber, wielding the razor with a sure hand, despite the dreadful tossing of the vessel. He seemed to be an intelligent man. Frederick had to listen to a second account of the _Nordmania_, of how the waterspout had plunged through the ladies' parlour and carried the piano down into the hold.

An ordinary German servant-girl of the peasant class entered. She looked healthy to the core and none too intelligent. The barber called her Rosa and gave her a bottle of eau de Cologne.

"That's the fifth bottle of eau de Cologne that I've given her for her mistress since we left Cuxhaven," the barber explained after she had left. "Her mistress is a divorced woman with two children. Her name is Mrs. Liebling. She is very nervous. Rosa hasn't a very easy time of it. For five dollars a month she has to be at Mrs. Liebling's beck and call morning, noon and night. She takes entire charge of the children. Soon after we left Cuxhaven, Mrs. Liebling came to have her hair dressed. You should have heard how she went on about that girl. The things she said against her. Not a spark of gratitude. She said the stupid, lazy thing wasn't worth the price of her second-class cabin."

Several times Frederick had heard the sound of quarrelling mingled with children's crying in the cabin opposite his. Once he had even distinctly caught the slapping sound of what must have been a box over somebody's ear.

"Does she hit Rosa?" he asked the barber.

"Yes."

Clearly, then, it was his neighbour of the opposite cabin in whose service the girl was.

Frederick enjoyed listening to the lively barber retail gossip, while he lay stretched out in his patented chair. It diverted his mind from troublesome thoughts. The barber, who had been sailing the seas for many years, was by no means of the ordinary type of his class. He delivered a short discourse on modern shipbuilding, the moral of which was, not to construct light steamers for speed.

"Altogether," he observed, "it's a pity to lay so much stress on record-making. How is a great big body with walls like a wafer to resist heavy seas for any length of time? And see what tremendous engines it has to carry and what an enormous amount of coal it consumes. But the _Roland's_ a good boat. It was built in Glasgow in the yards of John Elder and Company. It has been running since June, 1881. The engines are compound steam-engines with three cylinders and 5800 horse power. They require one hundred and fifteen tons of coal every day. The boat makes sixteen knots an hour, and has a tonnage of 4510. There are one hundred and sixty-eight men in the crew."

The barber had all these details at his fingers' ends. In a tone of annoyance, as if the thing caused him personally a lot of trouble, he told that the _Roland_ on each trip to or from New York dragged one thousand and three hundred tons of anthracite coal in its coal-bunkers. A slow trip, he insisted, was safe and comfortable, while a quick trip was dangerous and expensive.

The little saloon with its electric lighting would have been a very comfortable place to be in, had it only stood at rest. But unfortunately its walls were quivering to the pulse of the engines and the floor was rising and sagging to the swell and fall of the waves, which every now and then leapt against the port-hole with tiger-like fury. The flasks in the closets rattled.

"A heavier ship," said the barber, "built to go more slowly, wouldn't be pitching like this."

Next he spoke of a little person, who dyed her hair, a dancer. She had spent more than an hour in his chair, having him show her rouge and face powders, until finally he had displayed his entire stock of Pinaud and Roger et Gallet. The barber chuckled.

"On sea trips," he said, "a man has a chance of getting to know the queerest women." And he proceeded to recount a number of incidents, which, on his own word, he himself had witnessed. The heroine in each case was an erotomanic woman.

"Just ask our doctor," he said. He was of the old-fashioned sort of barber-surgeon, and in the capacity of surgeon had gathered the most scandalous portion of his experiences. "One of the worst cases," he went on, "was that of an American girl, who was found lying unconscious in one of the life-boats swinging from the davits. She was hideously abused by all the crew, one at a time, but they fixed it so that the whole blame could be laid on her."

Frederick knew that none other than Ingigerd Hahlström was responsible for the direction the barber's thoughts had taken. She had been sitting in the very chair in which he was now reclining. A current streamed from its upholstery into his body. His heart began to beat irregularly, ceasing for an instant, then leaping wildly. To his horror, he observed that Mara's power over him was not yet broken.

He jumped up and shook himself. He felt as if he must plunge into a hot and cold bath and let stinging douches run down his spine to wash him outwardly and inwardly clean and expel that foul poison from his blood.

XIX

The barbershop lay aft, and nearby one could look through glass panes upon the working of the cylinders and pistons. Frederick toilsomely clambered up to the promenade deck and crept into the overcrowded smoking-room. Though it disgusted him to be wedged into a small space with a lot of noisy men, he had come here in the desire to escape the wild orgy of his thoughts. Doctor Wilhelm had kept a place for him.

"The doctor tells me you were in the steerage, and a beautiful Deborah made a dangerous impression upon you," the captain said, smiling roguishly.

Frederick laughed. He ordered beer, and the conversation was jolly from the start.

In their corner the skat players were sitting over their cards. They were business men, all of apoplectic constitution. They had been drinking beer and playing skat ever since breakfast, in fact, except when they slept, ever since boarding the steamer. The conversation in the room was of no interest to them. Even the weather failed to elicit any questions from them. They seemed to be insensible to the tossing of the great vessel, or the dismal howling of the wind. The force of the roll was so tremendous that Frederick involuntarily clutched at the thing nearest to him. Up went the port side, down went the starboard. Up went the starboard, down went the port side. Sometimes Frederick felt as if port and starboard might plunge one over the other; in which case the _Roland's_ keel would float above water, while the bridge, masts, and smoke-stacks would be submerged at a distance below the surface. And in that case all would be lost; but those skat players, it seemed to him, would go on playing undisturbed.

Hahlström's tall figure came creeping with bent head into the tobacco smoke. His clear, cold, critical eyes roved about looking for a seat. He paid no attention to the armless man, who jestingly shouted an ironic remark to him. With cool politeness he seated himself at the greatest possible distance from Stoss, drew a pouch of tobacco from his pocket, and filled a short Dutch pipe. Frederick's immediate thought was, "Where is Achleitner?"

"How is your daughter feeling?" Doctor Wilhelm asked.

"Oh, she's just a little upset now. The weather will be getting better, I suppose."

The whole company, which, of course consisted of the men either by nature or from frequent exposure proof against seasickness, now entered into the usual discussion of the weather.

"Is it true, Captain," somebody asked, "that last night we nearly collided with a derelict?"

The captain smiled, raised his brows, and made no reply.

"Where are we now, Captain? Was there fog last night? I saw some snow fall. And for at least an hour I heard the siren blow every two minutes."

But Captain von Kessel remained highly monosyllabic in everything pertaining to the management of the vessel and the prospects for a good or bad crossing.

"Is it true that there is gold bullion on board for the treasury in Washington?"

Von Kessel smiled and sent a thin wreath of cigarette smoke curling through his moustache.

"That would be carrying coals to Newcastle," remarked Wilhelm.

And now the great theme, the theme of themes, became the general topic of conversation. Each of the travellers, of course, straightway had a picture of his own fortune in mind, every cent of it, or else tried to make an accurate mental calculation. They all turned into calculating machines, while aloud comparing the capitals of the great American banking firms, the Bank of England, the Crédit Lyonnais and the wealth of all the American millionaires. Even the skat players gave their attention for a few moments at a time.

America was then suffering from a business depression, a crisis, as the political economists dub it. The causes of the depression came up for discussion. Most of the Americans present happened to be Democrats, and they threw the blame on the Republicans. The Tammany Tiger was the subject of especial execration. It not only controlled New York City, the mayor of which was a creature of Tammany, but had also put its men into the most influential positions throughout the land. And every Tammany man knew how to shear his sheep. As a result, the American people were thoroughly bled. The corruption in the highest offices was said to be on a tremendous scale. Millions of dollars were appropriated to the navy, but if a man-of-war actually happened to be built, the thing was a great achievement, since the money, long before it was applied to its proper purpose, sifted down into the pockets of peaceful Americans, whose interest in the navy was of the slightest.

"I shouldn't care to be buried in America," cried Stoss, in his sharp voice. "It would be too dreary and boresome for me in my grave. I hate their spitting and their ice-water." The burst of laughter that greeted his remark encouraged him to further sallies. "Americans are parrots, incessantly chattering two words, dollar and business, dollar and business, dollar and business. Those two words have been death to culture in America. An American doesn't even know what it is to have the Englishman's spleen. Think of the fearfulness of living in a country called the land of dollars. We have human beings living in Europe. The Americans regard everything, even their fellow-men, from the point of view of the number of dollars they represent. If a thing can't be reckoned in dollars, they have no eyes for it. And then Carnegie and Company come and want to astonish us with their disgusting shopkeeper's philosophy. Do you think they're helping the world on by slicing off some of the world's dollars and then returning some of the sliced off dollars with a great flourish of trumpets? Do you think that if they do us the favour to give us some of their money, we'll throw overboard our Mozart and Beethoven, our Kant and Schopenhauer, our Schiller and Goethe, our Rembrandts, Leonardos, Michael Angelos, in short, all our wealth of art and intellect? What is a miserable cur of an American millionaire, a dollar maniac, as compared with all those great men? Let him come and ask us for alms."

XX

The captain invited Frederick to his cabin and asked him to write a few words in his album. On the way, he showed him the chart-room and the wheel-house, where a sailor was turning the great wheel at the directions of the first mate, whose voice came from the bridge through a speaking-tube. Frederick read the compass in front of the wheel and saw that the _Roland_ lay west-southwest. The captain was in hopes of striking better weather by taking a more southerly route. The helmsman did not allow his attention to be diverted for the fraction of a second. He kept his bronzed, weather-beaten face with its corn-coloured beard turned unwaveringly toward the compass, and his sea-blue eyes fastened upon the west-southwest line. And the face of the compass, in its round copper case, notwithstanding the vessel's elephantine leaps and bounds, never deviated from the horizontal.

When they reached his cabin, the handsome blond German, whose eyes came of the same stock as the mariner's at the wheel, became more expansive. He insisted on Frederick's taking a comfortable seat and offered him a cigar. He spoke of his own life. Frederick learned that he was unmarried, had two unmarried sisters and a brother with a wife and children. The pictures of his sisters, his brother, his brother's wife, his brother's children, and his parents were hung symmetrically on the wall over a red plush sofa. They were sacred objects.

Frederick did not fail to ask his stereotyped question:

"Do you follow your calling because you have a decided preference for it?"

"Tell me of a position on land where I could command the same salary, and I'd exchange without an instant's hesitation. Seafaring begins to lose its charms when a man gets on in years."

The captain's guttural voice was extremely agreeable. It suggested to Frederick the sound of colliding billiard balls. His enunciation was perfect, absolutely free of a dialectic tinge.

"My brother has a wife and children," he said. Though there was, of course, not the slightest trace of sentimentality in his tone, it was evident from the gleam in his eyes how he idolised his nieces and nephews. He pointed out each one's picture and at the end said frankly, "My brother is an enviable man." Then he asked Frederick whether he was the son of General von Kammacher. He had taken part in the campaign of 1870 and 1871 as lieutenant of the regiment of artillery of which Frederick's father had been chief. He spoke of him with great admiration and reverence.

Frederick remained in the captain's cabin over half an hour. His presence seemed to give the skipper special pleasure. It was astonishing what a gentle, tender soul was hidden beneath the commanding exterior. Before disclosing a bit of that soul, he always puffed harder at his cigar and gave Frederick a long, searching look. By degrees Frederick discovered what magnet was tugging strongly at the blond giant's heart. He kept recurring alternately to the Black Forest and the Thüringian Forest, and Frederick had a mental picture of the magnificent man clipping his privet hedge in front of his cosey cottage, or walking among his rose bushes with a pruning knife in his hand. He could detect that the captain would far rather be living secluded in a sea of green leaves and green pine needles; and he felt convinced that it would have been delicious to him to submerge himself forever in the soft rushing of endless forests and dispense forever with the rushing and roaring of all the oceans in the world.

"Perhaps the night of all days has not yet come," said the captain, with a humorous expression. He rose and placed the large album in front of Frederick. "Now I am going to lock you in here with this pen and this ink, and when I return, I want to find something clever on this page."

Frederick von Kammacher turned the leaves of the mariner's album. It was unmistakable that the hope for a vegetable garden, gooseberry bushes, the chirping of birds, and the buzzing of bees was most intimately connected with this book. Under the pressure of dreariness and the grave responsibility for many a sea trip, it must expand the captain's soul to look over it, Frederick thought. It seemed to point to a time when, in the peace and security of his simple home, it would serve its turn by testifying to all the dangers its possessor had gone through, all his past struggles and hardships. In a sheltered haven it would afford pleasant retrospect, full of content.

Frederick's own quietistic ideal in the form of a farm and a solitary log hut occurred to him. But he was not living in it alone. The little devil Mara was sharing it with him. In embitterment he mentally climbed to still lonelier regions, and saw himself a hermit, who prayed, drank nothing but water, and lived on roots, nuts, and sometimes a fish of his own catching.

When the captain returned and he and Frederick had taken leave of each other, this is what he found in his book:

Borne aloft on wave and ocean, Of thy master's course partaking, Some day thou wilt cease thy motion, Of thy master's rest partaking. In the garden of his stillness, To his manly deeds inspiring, Thou wilt faithfully bear witness. Thou art language well becoming Him who daily danger faces, Gratitude of souls proclaiming, Whom he bore through cosmic spaces.

The signature was

"Frederick von Kammacher, Globetrotter."

XXI

Frederick, holding on to his hat with one hand and clinging to the railing with the other, descended from the windy heights of the captain's cabin to the promenade deck. When he passed the cabin of the first mate, the door opened, and Von Halm appeared in conversation with Achleitner. Achleitner was pale, and there was an anxious look in his face.

"I have rented the lieutenant's cabin for Miss Hahlström. I could not bear to see her suffering so in her own cabin," he called to Frederick.