The Luxury of Going About Incognito
For six years the couple had lived in a very small town, in which each inhabitant could furnish a detailed biography of his neighbour, possessed an intimate knowledge of his daily menu, and knew just when the post delivered a package to him—the size and shape of which package being made the subject of conversation at the next coffee-party, where also unfailing conclusions were arrived at as to the contents and sender of the object in question. Judge Schwarz, being a person of distinction in town, naturally suffered more than others under the zealous observation of his neighbours, and was quite sure that he could not have a button sewed on his coat without having his friends mention the fact to each other and make their comments upon it;—ay, he went so far as to believe himself particularly favoured by good fortune if the local paper did not get hold of the important event and retail it to its readers the next morning in a sprightly editorial.
This consciousness had in the course of years reached such a stage in the judge’s mind as to become utterly unendurable; and as in certain individuals painful inner experiences seek to become personified in some external object, so all this small-town gossip, this puerile mutual observation and control, seemed to concentrate itself in the person of the Apothecary Lebermann, a good-natured but essentially prosy person, possessed of an insatiable curiosity, who was interested in the whole world, and wanted to know everything—on the other hand taking for granted that others had as lively a concern about him and the experiences of his daily life.
On the day on which our story begins the judge was returning from court in rather an irritable mood, and his face darkened perceptibly as he saw the apothecary coming to meet him.
While it was, as we have said, Herr Lebermann’s justifiable peculiarity to desire to know everything, and with a rare toughness of purpose to work upon his neighbour with queries until the other would fling the desired information at his head in a fit of uncontrollable indignation, the judge was the most uncommunicative of mortals. It was his intention that no one should know what he did, or where he bought his things, or with whom he kept up a correspondence—ay, even his Christian name was to him a matter of deep secrecy; in fact, a sharp altercation between him and his wife had once been brought about by no other cause than that she had failed to fully understand his feelings in this respect, and unadvisedly addressing him one day on the railroad with the harmless remark, “See the charming view, Karl!” had unmasked him before his fellow-travellers.
Here these two gentlemen, as unlike as possible in their peculiarities, met upon the street, and while the judge was as nimble as an eel in trying to escape the apothecary, the latter was equally assiduous in his efforts to detain him, and opened the conversation with the apparently unnecessary question, “Coming from court so early to-day, Herr Schwarz?”
“No!” replied the judge unkindly.
“No?” repeated Herr Lebermann, in a tone of surprise. “This is the way I generally see you come. Where have you been, then?”
Apparently the judge was deaf.
“Seems to me you generally come from court at this time of day,” persisted Herr Lebermann; “Ah, I see, you don’t care to tell me,” he added pleasantly, “but I know all about it just the same!”
“If you know it there’s no need of asking,” growled the judge.
“And now you’re on your way home,” remarked Herr Lebermann, with the blissful serenity of a man who has accomplished his purpose of knowing all about the aims and intents of other people. “I’ll walk along with you a bit. I am always out for a constitutional at this time of day!”
“That’s a wise thing to do!” remarked Herr Schwarz with fatal indifference.
“And when I get home I eat my sandwich,” the apothecary confidentially informed him; “only one, you know, so as not to take away my appetite for dinner! By the way, that reminds me—how does it agree with you to dine so much later?”
The judge gave him a scathing look. “How do you know that I dine later than usual?” he asked indignantly.
“You see, your cook is the sister of our maid, and she told her about it. You dine at half-past two, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” cried the irritated judge, struggling to control his temper; “here we are at my house—good morning, Herr Lebermann!”
“One moment!” said the apothecary, taking possession of the judge’s button-hole while the latter was angrily seeking to escape; “there seems to be company at your house.”
“Why?” asked Schwarz, trembling with ire—he had fetched his sister-in-law from the station twelve hours ago, long after nightfall, and had hoped that the fact of her presence was as yet unknown.
“Well, I saw your maid buy three little tarts at the pastry-cook’s this morning,” said the apothecary innocently; “she generally takes only two—so I thought, perhaps——”
The judge darted a glance of utter contempt at his companion.
“Why did you not take it for granted I might desire to eat two tarts to-day?” he said with alarming politeness, and then walked into the house full of wrath.
Weighty decisions were ripening within him, and the result of his deliberation became apparent as he sat down to lunch with his ladies, and suddenly delivered himself of the astonishing words: “We’ll start for Berlin this evening!”
Helen dropped her fork and gazed at her husband with wide-open eyes. “This evening?”
“When I say this evening I don’t mean next year,” growled the paterfamilias. “That’s just like a woman! Here you’ve always been talking and begging to go and travel—to go and leave this miserable little place for awhile, and now when I offer to go, you raise objections!”
“My dear Karl!” began his wife soothingly, “I was only taken by surprise at your sudden resolve. What can have occurred to bring it about?”
“I’m tired of this small town gossip, and more especially of the apothecary!” said Karl, energetically. “Confound it—I can’t blow my nose but that Lebermann sends to inquire if I have a cold! I want to go and see what life is like in a large town, where I can go about incognito. I can just manage to get away over Sunday. We’ll take three round-trip tickets and go to Berlin this evening. Go and pack your things!”
He folded his napkin and got up. A low exclamation from Annchen interrupted him.
“Three?—shall I go too?”
There was such an unmistakable expression of rapture upon her charming face that a smile stole across the features of her growling brother-in-law.
“Well, I should think so,” he said; “did you suppose we would leave you at home?”
“Thank you, Karl—thank you!” cried Annchen, in a state of bliss; and while Helen was softly caressing her “bear” upon one side, his little sister-in-law was patting his shoulder upon the other, crying, “Thank you, Karl,—I think you are perfectly lovely!”
“Well, you’re the first person that has told me so since I was two years old,” remarked the judge, whose dudgeon was melting under the beams of the rapture he had been the cause of, like snow before the summer’s sun. “Now I know how to tame such shy little birds. What, Helen? Perfectly lovely, am I?”
And with a half-ironical, half-flattered shrug of his shoulders he left the room to devote himself to assiduous studies of the time-table, which to him, as to most people who rarely travel, was a book of seven seals.
The day on which this memorable resolution was formed was a cold, windy autumn day, making it imperative to choose warm clothing for the night journey. All day the ladies were occupied with putting their wearing apparel in order, which, in the face of this journey, proved to be inadequate in many respects.
“We’ll buy all that in Berlin,” said Helen consolingly to her sister, who was putting on her plain little straw hat with a look of deep concern, quite unconscious of the fact how charmingly becoming it was to her rosy face. The judge walked up and down in the room, casting brief remarks at his ladies from time to time. “Don’t take your entire outfit along just for two or three days,” he remarked warningly.
Evening came fast enough; every moment was made the most of, and when the lamps were lit there was still this and that waiting to be attended to. At the last moment—they were just sitting down to tea—a thought struck the paterfamilias; he touched the bell.
“Did you attend to what I told you this morning?” he asked the maid in his mystifying fashion.
Pauline looked at her master with no very intelligent expression in her face.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Did you get what I told you?” queried the judge. Pauline was silent, thereby giving most decided expression to her bewilderment.
“Why, Karl, do tell her what you mean,” implored Helen; “there’s no time to be lost—we must be going!”
“Very well,” replied the judge discontentedly; “of course it is more than you can endure not to know what I am referring to! Did you go and fetch my fur-lined great-coat from the furrier’s?”
Pauline blushed guiltily.
“Oh, dear me, I forgot all about it, sir—I’ll run there now as fast as I can!”
“Yes, and you’ll run back no doubt when we are in the cars,” said her master contemptuously. “Well, then, I shall take my death of cold on the journey—at any rate I shall be spared the trouble of telling Lebermann just how my funeral came off!”
“Well, well, Karl,” said Helen, soothing his dismal forebodings; “seems to me there might be some other way out of your difficulty. Pauline can fetch the great-coat to the station and hand it to you there. Do you understand, Pauline?”
Pauline nodded humbly and departed, while the judge arose and took up the leather bag containing the money and tickets, and enjoined his ladies to make haste. “Put on your things, children—I think the carriage is coming!”
As the party reached the station their happy mood was somewhat dampened, for Pauline and the great-coat were not in sight. All in vain did eager eyes pierce the darkness of night, and all were about to succumb to fate and take their seats in the car, when the long-expected one, like Schiller’s diver, appeared breathless upon the scene, holding the coat on high, and swinging it like a triumphal banner. The judge without delay slipped into the warmer garment, and indeed it was high time, for already the conductor was slamming to the doors of the other compartments,—a sharp whistle, and the train started.
Our three travellers were in the rosiest mood imaginable. Helen, who had not set foot outside of the provincial town, which was now her home, since her marriage, pictured to herself the glories of Berlin in the brightest of hues, and Annchen dreamed vague, golden dreams, and indulged in exquisite air-castles, in which at the decisive moment her unknown hero was always seen leaning out of some window.
The judge was gleefully rubbing his hands.
“Now then—at last we are free of that miserable place,” he said, making himself comfortable in his corner of the compartment. “Now let us all go to sleep and open our eyes to-morrow morning in Berlin!”
The train sped through the night air; and it was not until it had reached Berlin that the Schwarzes awoke with the proud consciousness of being in the Imperial Capital.
The judge put his somewhat dishevelled head out of the window.
“See the hurry and bustle of the crowd,” he said cheerfully. “This is rather different from the streets of Solau! Here the individual disappears like a drop in the ocean, and no one knows or cares what his neighbour is about. Come, children, we must get out!”
He stretched himself with lazy ease, and took his hand-luggage down out of the net, then jumped down himself after his ladies.
“Look you, there’s not a person knows us here,” he continued; “we can do exactly as we please for three days—it’s like being at a grand masquerade!”
“Good morning, Herr Judge!” a voice cried at that moment behind him. “Shall I fetch you a cab?”
The addressed started perceptibly. A porter quite unknown to himself or his ladies stood before him and held out his hand for the luggage, with a peculiar, knowing smile upon his features, then quickly piled them upon his back with skilful dexterity.
“How do you know who I am?” asked the judge, somewhat irritated at this unexpected violation of his incognito.
His unknown friend, however, had already turned upon his heel in search of a cab, and was now storing his burden upon the top.
A glorious autumn morning was dawning over town, and the unknown splendour before them beckoned invitingly to our unsophisticated friends.
“Look here, Karl,” began Helen, who had meanwhile conferred with Annchen as to their mutual wishes, “what do you say to going on foot to the hotel? As we are only to be here for so short a time, we should make the most of every moment, and seems to me, after last night’s journey, a walk would be much more refreshing to us than a ride in a close cab!”
“Oh, yes!” cried Annchen, whose beaming eyes gazed upon the new world of wonders as a child might gaze upon fairyland.
“All right, go a-head!” replied the judge, whom the air of the metropolis had suddenly changed into a jovial fellow. “I’ll run and buy a map of Berlin, and then join you!”
He paid for the cab while the ladies were walking slowly a-head, and gave a fee to make sure that the charioteer would safely deposit the trunks at the hotel; but as he was turning back to the station to buy the map the cab-driver called out—
“Thank you kindly, Herr Judge!”
That good gentleman was perceptibly taken aback; he cast a suspicious glance behind him,—there stood the porter who had addressed him in like manner, and the two men were grinning diabolically.
“Aha,” said the judge to himself, “that fellow noticed that his foolish speech vexed me, and now they are having a laugh at me in company. I suppose that’s Berlin humour, and it has got to be endured!”
In possession of a Berlin town-map, which rivalled a moderate-sized bed-screen in size, the judge hastened to join his ladies, who had been caught by a shop window in the Friedrichstrasse as securely as flies caught in a fly-trap.
“That’s right,” said the judge indulgently, “take your time looking at these things. Where you are as utterly unknown as we are here, there is no harm in looking at show-windows.”
He thereupon gave the objects in the window a close inspection.
“Well, Herr Schwarz, what is it that’s taking your fancy?” suddenly cried a shrill voice, and a shoemaker’s apprentice with undisguised mirth in his rogue’s visage slipped by him laughing.
The judge was speechless.
“This is getting worse and worse!” he exclaimed; “there’s something wrong here! Come, children, this is positively uncanny. This looks like the artful device of some scoundrel. Let us hurry up and go to the hotel. The next time any one calls me Herr Judge or Herr Schwarz, it will be the worse for him!”
The sisters were growing nervous also.
“Yes, yes,” assented Helen, “we’ll go to the hotel—it is very unpleasant here in the streets! I don’t understand how it is, Karl,” she added; “you must bear a striking resemblance to some popular town celebrity, whose name happens to be Schwarz into the bargain!”
“And who happens to be a judge as well?” asked Karl sarcastically. “That’s very probable, my child! I have always said that no sooner do you set out to have a good time than immediately something occurs to frustrate your plans!”
They had walked on, eagerly discussing the possible cause of this unusual occurrence, and suddenly they discovered that they had lost their bearings.
“Where are we, anyway?” asked Annchen with a trembling voice. “I thought we were to be in Unter den Linden by this time?”
“That is so, Karl,” added Helen; “you are taking us nobody knows where! These streets are not at all attractive, and I am tired out!”
Karl forthwith produced his tremendous map of the town.
“Wait one moment,” he said with dignity; “I’ll tell you immediately.”
And he then and there unfolded the enormous sheet. A playful morning wind, however, mercilessly jerked it hither and thither, and there was nothing for it but to beg the ladies to stand on either side as banner-holders, and help him save it from destruction. But it took Karl longer than he thought to find his way about, and while he was still engaged in the effort, a tall, elegant-looking man walked down the street, and, with evident amusement, glanced at the conspicuous group, especially noting the charming person of little Annchen. The face of the stranger wore a pleasant, good-humoured expression, and, moreover, was so handsome and attractive that there was no perceptible reason why Annchen, raising her eyes at that moment, should suddenly blush to the roots of her hair, her hand at the same time trembling so that she could scarcely hold the map over which Karl and Helen were still chanting a woful duet in search of their hotel.
The stranger, evidently struck by the appearance of the lovely, embarrassed girl, walked on slowly and then turned and came back. There was undisguised merriment and a half-controlled laugh upon his lips as he passed around behind Karl and before the fair banner-holders.
“Good morning, Herr Judge Schwarz,” he said, taking his hat off low to the ladies, and turned to pass on his way.
But he had reckoned without his host. In a paroxysm of rage the judge darted after him.
“Sir, what does this mean? How do you know my name and title?” he cried, panting with indignation, while Helen vainly tried to appease him.
Karl shook off her hand impatiently.
“How can you have the effrontery to address me by my name?” he repeated in a tone of thunder.
“My dear sir,” replied the stranger, laughing, “if your name is to be kept secret, allow me to call your attention to the fact that it would be the part of wisdom not to wear it plainly upon your back!”
Karl gazed upon the stranger in speechless astonishment. Helen turned her husband dexterously around. Ah, here was the solution of the riddle! That benighted furrier had forgotten, in the press of business, to remove the slip of paper from the judge’s great-coat, by which that valuable garment had been distinguished from others entrusted to his keeping, and poor Karl had been walking about for an hour in Berlin with an enormous placard on his back bearing the inscription, “Herr Judge Schwarz!”
While Helen and Anna were occupied in removing this enemy of the much-desired incognito from the back of their liege lord and master, Annchen found time to whisper to her sister, “That was Kurt!”
“Nonsense!” cried Helen in surprise, now giving Karl’s tormentor a scrutinising glance, while the latter was vainly endeavouring to pacify the enraged Karl—more likely, I regret to say, for the sake of the pretty damsel than for brotherly love. But Karl was obstinate, and would have nothing to do with forgiveness, and even the kind offer of the unknown to show him the way had no further effect than to extract a surly reply, “You may, for all I care!”
“We want to go to the R—— Hotel,” added the judge reluctantly, “if you know where that is?”
The stranger laughed again.
“Oh yes, I know perfectly well,” he said; “it is not at all out of my way, if you will allow me to escort you there.”
“No, thank you,” said Karl curtly; “just tell me the way to go. My bump of locality is very well developed, but in this confounded town there’s no finding one’s way about.”
“Allow me to mention my name,” said the stranger after he had given brief directions as to the way, lifting his hat.
“Don’t trouble yourself, thank you,” growled the judge; “it is not my habit to make acquaintances upon the street. Come along, children.”
And after a brief and not very reassuring farewell to the young man, he gave an arm to each of his ladies, and drew them along after him.
The stranger, thus brusquely dismissed, looked after the three departing figures for a moment, gave a low whistle, and went on his way still laughing.
Meanwhile Helen, touched by the look of disappointment on her sister’s face, had smartly reproached her husband for showing so little politeness to the stranger.
“I don’t understand you, Karl,” she said. “How could you be so rude to the young man? It was only too natural that, under the circumstances, he indulged in the harmless joke of addressing you!”
“The impudence of it!” cried Karl in a rage.
“In fact, you ought to be grateful to him,” Helen added boldly, “for without him and his explanation you would still be walking about with the slip on your back, like a book from the circulating library. The young fellow looked very nice!” Karl stood stock-still.
“I’ll tell you what, children,” he said energetically, “now leave me in peace about your unknown friend! That’s the way all women are—that’s what a woman’s opinion is worth! Looked nice, did he? And such creatures are all for equality with men! If you are on the jury, and a convicted murderer has blue calf’s eyes, every one of you would acquit him! I’d have you to know that it is my firm conviction the man was a sharper!”
“Shame on you, Karl!” cried Anna, her just ire getting the better of her shyness. Her hero a sharper,—this was too bad!
Her brother-in-law gave her a penetrating look.
“What business is it of yours, if I may be permitted to ask?”
“Annchen has seen him at D——!” said Helen, endeavouring to hide her sister’s embarrassment.
“What?” asked Karl suspiciously, “you know the fellow? What’s his name?”
That, as we know, was a very inconvenient question. That the unknown was called Kurt would scarcely suffice to satisfy the judge by way of personal information, and that was all Annchen knew about him. So she was silent, and confined herself to blushing once more, which, however pretty it might look, could scarcely be regarded as a satisfactory explanation, at least not to this unsentimental brother-in-law and judge.
“Aha!” said Karl, with a lordly air, “you are so well acquainted that you do not so much as know his name! Take my word for it, the man was a sharper—that is my firm opinion. Such fellows always look very elegant and well-bred. Not another word about him!”
Meanwhile they had safely reached the hotel, and it was time to yield to the imperious need for rest and sleep. This, to be sure, was not indulged in for long, for excitement and the wish to enjoy Berlin to the full soon drove the pleasure-seekers out again.
In the dining-room the question, “What now?” was discussed at length by the couple, while Annchen listened to everything that was proposed with unmistakable indifference. To her Berlin had grown to be nothing but an enormous frame to hold the likeness of the adorable, who had crossed her path once more this morning in so surprising a fashion, and, alas! seemed utterly unconscious of the fact that he had ever seen her before.
The unknown, whom we will herewith introduce to our readers as Dr. Rüdiger, had meanwhile also reached the R—— Hotel, at which he too, as good luck would have it, had put up.
Himself unnoticed, he observed how the judge and his ladies, after a short parley with the portier, left the hotel, and no sooner had they turned the next corner than he too approached that personage.
“Has Herr Judge Schwarz gone out already?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Yes, sir, Herr Schwarz and the ladies have just gone,” replied the portier, who in his person united the dignity of a Spanish grandee with eely suavity.
“That’s too bad!” remarked the wily Rüdiger. “We were going to make an engagement for this evening!”
“Herr Schwarz ordered tickets to the opera for to-morrow night,” said the portier.
“Ah! that’s capital,” replied Rüdiger. “You may procure a ticket for me in the same box; I will come and ask you for it.”
He walked away cheerfully, and patiently did the principal sights of Berlin, in the secret hope that fortune would favour him and bring about a meeting between him and the Schwarz family. But for the present this hope came to naught.
Meanwhile our party had set out on their trip of pleasure. First they had devoted themselves to show-windows, and with many an admiring ejaculation had come to the conclusion that Berlin was the only place worth sojourning in. Then they pantingly followed two closed Imperial carriages, and endeavoured to make each other believe that they had caught a sight of the persons within. Finally, after the museum had been hurried through with profound awe and moderate comprehension, they all experienced decided pangs of hunger, and, with the intention of dining cosily together, they entered a superb restaurant on the ground floor.
The judge escorted his ladies to an inviting little table near one of the windows, from where one had a fine view of the streets and the busy crowds—not, to be sure, with the additional advantage mentioned in the well-known song—
“Across the lands we gaze, oh!
While we are all unseen——,”
for every glass of wine and every forkful of meat could be closely scrutinised by the passers-by.
But the pleasing knowledge of being quite unknown comforted the judge for this drawback of his position.
The waiter’s question as to what they wished to have for dinner might have appeared as an insult to the judge in his exceeding love of secrecy; being, however, very hungry he generously forgave him, and the three together assiduously studied the menu, which sported a variety of names which might have been made to stand for almost anything, so that whatever one ordered there was always a pleasant surprise in view.
Soon a bottle with a promising silvery cork stood upon the table in a dainty cooler, and the judge was just raising his glass to drink the ladies’ health: “Children,” he said, “I can’t tell you how delightful this is, to feel that one is sitting here free of all good friends and neighbours. Here’s to our incognito!”
There was a playful tap at the window. Karl, poor fellow, started as if he had beheld a ghost—indeed I know not but a ghost even would have been a more welcome sight at that particular moment than the smiling face of Herr Lebermann, who, with the unmistakable consciousness of giving the judge and his family a great and unexpected pleasure, pressed his nose flat against the window-pane.
The judge dropped his fork. “For heaven’s sake—Lebermann!” he stammered with difficulty.
A further critical remark was suppressed, for the good Lebermann, with a happy smile upon his face, stood before our pleasure-seekers.
“Well now, you’d never have supposed you’d find me here, would you?” he asked, full of rapture.
“No—that is the last thing I should have thought of,” replied Karl mildly. “What brought you here?”
“I’ll tell you all about it in a minute,” replied Herr Lebermann, having given a chivalrous greeting to the ladies and proved himself thoroughly well-informed by looking at Annchen with the words, “Ah, this, I suppose, is your visitor that came the other night!”
He drew a chair up to the table and ordered a beef-steak.
The judge looked about him wildly, and was apparently so greatly in danger of indulging in unwary remarks, that Helen, to avert the storm, imprudently reminded the apothecary of his promised narrative.
“Well, you see,” began the interesting arrival, “I noticed some time ago that there was something wrong with my molar tooth—the third in the upper row,” he added, to expel every doubt. “I believe I mentioned it to you once, Herr Judge?”
“It’s quite possible!” sighed Karl brokenly.
“Yes, yes, I remember it quite well! We were sitting at König’s in the restaurant—it is not very long ago! Well, never mind! So, then, the day before yesterday, in the afternoon, that tooth began to hurt me.”
“Too bad!” said Helen pitifully, feeling it incumbent upon her to say something polite.
“It wasn’t very bad,” said Herr Lebermann consolingly, “but still I felt it, you know! Yesterday, in the morning, the head-man had left open the back-door to the shop, and then there is always a draught; you have no idea how it blows. Time and time again I have said to him: ‘Herr Semmler,’ says I, ‘don’t leave that back-door unlatched,’ but he can’t get over the habit! You will say, you wouldn’t be put upon!”
He looked at his victims expectantly.
“I don’t say any such thing!” growled Karl, his soul burning within him. “Hurry up, children—we must be going!”
“I shall be through in a minute,” said Herr Lebermann. “Where did I stop? Ah yes, I know! That miserable Semmler. When I tell him courteously it has no effect, and I don’t like to be curt to him, for he is a decent enough fellow, and it’s hard to find such another nowadays. He is quite to be depended upon. He has a little property too——”
“Yes, but Herr Lebermann,” interrupted Helen, who already saw her husband in spirit rush at him with a knife, “you were going to tell us what brought you to Berlin!”
Herr Lebermann cut up his beef-steak with much deliberation.
“I was just about to tell you,” he said with a courteous bow to Helen. “Well, you see, last night the door was left open again. I was somewhat heated. I had on a heavy over-coat,—perhaps I had walked faster than usual,—I shouldn’t at all wonder if I had!—I entered the shop—and there was a tremendous draught! You really have no idea how bad it was—and at that very moment my tooth was at it again! I was quite beside myself, went upstairs to talk to my wife. It is really very convenient to have our lodgings in the same house now. ‘Clara!’ says I, ‘my tooth!’ ‘The one that was stopped?’ says she. ‘Yes,’ says I. Do you know my Clara, Frau Schwarz?”
Helen gave an affirmative nod—she felt her eyelids growing heavy. Karl nervously drummed on the table, and Annchen was the only one who was not bored, for she was looking out upon the street in feverish excitement, hoping to catch a glimpse of her unknown hero, and hearing never a word that was spoken about her.
“Well,” continued Lebermann, “my wife, resolute as she is, said ‘Lebermann’—she always calls me Lebermann now, since our youngest is not called Fatty any more, but Robert, and you know my name is Robert too, and there was everlasting confusion—Robert—Robert—there was no knowing which Robert was meant. Well, to make a long story short, she said, ‘Lebermann,’ says she, ’this is a serious matter. You’d best go to the right man at once!’ No sooner said than done. I went and got a round-trip ticket—took the cars—came here—went to the dentist the first thing this morning—and now I’m free of all that, and I have had the rare good fortune of meeting you! This is delightful—really delightful!”
“So it is,” said Karl, who was on the utmost verge of human endurance. “And now we must be going! Good-day to you, Herr Lebermann!”
“Where do you put up?” asked the apothecary.
“Nowhere as yet,” lied Karl, with a bold brow, appeasing his conscience with the thought that they had not yet spent a night at the hotel. “Waiter—what’s to pay?”
“And where shall we meet again?” asked this kind neighbour, who seemed fully determined to dog the steps of his countrymen like a fearful nightly apparition.
“Well, that’s the last thing—I mean to say we haven’t any definite plans as yet,” said Karl, taking his hat from the hook, while the ladies, much cast down by the turn their happily-begun travels had taken, were also getting ready to go.
Annchen was struggling with her mantelet, when suddenly she heard a very engaging voice behind her: “Permit me to be of assistance,” and Dr. Rüdiger stood before the group with the happiest face in the world.
As far as the judge’s expression at that particular moment was concerned, it is only to be regretted that there was no photographer on the spot. He gave the uncalled helper a crushing look, offered his arm to his wife, beckoned Annchen to his side, and without a word, bowed coldly to Lebermann and left the restaurant.
This was really too bad! After several hours’ chase Rüdiger had at last succeeded in finding his lovely heroine once more, and at that very moment she was taken from him again. The only straw of refuge for him to cling to was Herr Lebermann, whom he had found in the company of the Schwarz family, and who might therefore be expected to give him some information.
“The judge was in a great hurry,” he said, turning with an assumed air of placidity to the apothecary, who at once made room for the new-comer at his table.
“Yes, that’s just like my friend Schwarz,” he said deliberately, “he’s always excited—always on the go. I’m not at all like him. I am much more quiet, and that’s the very reason we get on so famously! My wife always says: ‘Lebermann,’—my name is Lebermann, Apothecary Lebermann, from Solau——”
“Dr. Rüdiger!” remarked his new friend with a bow.
“Happy to meet you! Well, my wife says: ‘Lebermann, you are the most imperturbable man I ever saw.’ So you know my friend Schwarz, Dr. Rüdiger? Ah, by the way, I did not understand exactly whether he has found a hotel—do you know where he is staying?”
“At the R—— Hotel,” replied Rüdiger innocently, thereby doing the worst service he could to the family to which he wished to make himself agreeable.
“Ah, I am glad to hear it; I shall go and order a room immediately,” said Lebermann joyously; “he will be so pleased, I know.”
The judge and his ladies had taken up their wanderings again not in the best of spirits. The fact that the world is round had never struck them as so vexatious as now, when, in consequence of this dire roundness, Herr Lebermann was always rolling towards them.
“What with this bad luck we are having,” remarked the judge bitterly, “it’s quite likely the fellow will cross our path again. After to-day’s experience I am confident I could climb up on Mount Vesuvius to escape from men, and when I reach the top the volcano would be sure to spit out Lebermann. Hello! where are we now?” he added discontentedly. “We are always losing our way in this wretched town. In this respect really I prefer Solau!”
He disappeared once more behind his large map and began to search diligently for his hotel, or rather for the street that it was in.
A small street urchin, with a bright, saucy face, at this moment came singing and skipping along the side-walk. At sight of the deeply-absorbed family an expression of unalloyed bliss passed over his face, and with the exclamation, “Who lives behind there?” he put his finger straight through the map; thereupon he took flight with a perfect shriek of laughter ere the judge had recovered from his consternation sufficiently to take up the chase with any hope of success.
Helen and Annchen looked at their protector with some misgivings, in the uneasy expectation of seeing him beside himself with ire; but, lo and behold, he was quite the contrary! Herr Schwarz, who had been steadily regarding the injured map, strangely enough looked very well pleased, and taking a deep breath he said, “This is a good thing, now—if the lad hasn’t punched a hole in the spot I have always had such a deal of trouble to find. This really simplifies matters greatly.”
Hans Arnold.