Stories in Light and Shadow. Bret Harte
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invitation, said politely, “Ah! what matter, Gnadigste? I have still a letter for Fraulein Kopp [her rival], and I was told that I must not invite you both.” It was “our Karl” who astonished the hostess to whom he was sent at the last moment with apologies from an officer, unexpectedly detained at barrack duty, by suggesting that he should bring that unfortunate officer his dinner from the just served table. Nor were these charming infelicities confined to his social and domestic service. Although ready, mechanical, and invariably docile in the manual and physical duties of a soldier—which endeared him to the German drill-master—he was still invincibly ignorant as to its purport, or even the meaning and structure of the military instruments he handled or vacantly looked upon. It was “our Karl” who suggested to his instructors that in field-firing it was quicker and easier to load his musket to the muzzle at once, and get rid of its death-dealing contents at a single discharge, than to load and fire consecutively. It was “our Karl” who nearly killed the instructor at sentry drill by adhering to the letter of his instructions when that instructor had forgotten the password. It was the same Karl who, severely admonished for his recklessness, the next time added to his challenge the precaution, “Unless you instantly say 'Fatherland' I'll fire!” Yet his perfect good humor and childlike curiosity were unmistakable throughout, and incited his comrades and his superiors to show him everything in the hope of getting some characteristic comment from him. Everything and everybody were open to Karl and his good-humored simplicity.
That evening, as the general accompanied the consul down to the gateway and the waiting carriage, a figure in uniform ran spontaneously before them and shouted “Heraus!” to the sentries. But the general promptly checked “the turning out” of the guard with a paternal shake of his finger to the over-zealous soldier, in whom the consul recognized Karl. “He is my Bursche now,” said the general explanatorily. “My wife has taken a fancy to him. Ach! he is very popular with these women.” The consul was still more surprised. The Frau Generalin Adlerkreutz he knew to be a pronounced Englishwoman—carrying out her English ways, proprieties, and prejudices in the very heart of Schlachtstadt, uncompromisingly, without fear and without reproach. That she should follow a merely foreign society craze, or alter her English household so as to admit the impossible Karl, struck him oddly.
A month or two elapsed without further news of Karl, when one afternoon he suddenly turned up at the consulate. He had again sought the consular quiet to write a few letters home; he had no chance in the confinement of the barracks.
“But by this time you must be in the family of a field-marshal, at least,” suggested the consul pleasantly.
“Not to-day, but next week,” said Karl, with sublime simplicity; “THEN I am going to serve with the governor commandant of Rheinfestung.”
The consul smiled, motioned him to a seat at a table in the outer office, and left him undisturbed to his correspondence.
Returning later, he found Karl, his letters finished, gazing with childish curiosity and admiration at some thick official envelopes, bearing the stamp of the consulate, which were lying on the table. He was evidently struck with the contrast between them and the thin, flimsy affairs he was holding in his hand. He appeared still more impressed when the consul told him what they were.
“Are you writing to your friends?” continued the consul, touched by his simplicity.
“Ach ja!” said Karl eagerly.
“Would you like to put your letter in one of these envelopes?” continued the official.
The beaming face and eyes of Karl were a sufficient answer. After all, it was a small favor granted to this odd waif, who seemed to still cling to the consular protection. He handed him the envelope and left him addressing it in boyish pride.
It was Karl's last visit to the consulate. He appeared to have spoken truly, and the consul presently learned that he had indeed been transferred, through some high official manipulation, to the personal service of the governor of Rheinfestung. There was weeping among the Dienstmadchen of Schlachtstadt, and a distinct loss of originality and lightness in the gatherings of the gentler Hausfrauen. His memory still survived in the barracks through the later editions of his former delightful stupidities—many of them, it is to be feared, were inventions—and stories that were supposed to have come from Rheinfestung were described in the slang of the Offiziere as being “colossal.” But the consul remembered Rheinfestung, and could not imagine it as a home for Karl, or in any way fostering his peculiar qualities. For it was eminently a fortress of fortresses, a magazine of magazines, a depot of depots. It was the key of the Rhine, the citadel of Westphalia, the “Clapham Junction” of German railways, but defended, fortified, encompassed, and controlled by the newest as well as the oldest devices of military strategy and science. Even in the pipingest time of peace, whole railway trains went into it like a rat in a trap, and might have never come out of it; it stretched out an inviting hand and arm across the river that might in the twinkling of an eye be changed into a closed fist of menace. You “defiled” into it, commanded at every step by enfilading walls; you “debouched” out of it, as you thought, and found yourself only before the walls; you “reentered” it at every possible angle; you did everything apparently but pass through it. You thought yourself well out of it, and were stopped by a bastion. Its circumvallations haunted you until you came to the next station. It had pressed even the current of the river into its defensive service. There were secrets of its foundations and mines that only the highest military despots knew and kept to themselves. In a word—it was impregnable.
That such a place could not be trifled with or misunderstood in its right-and-acute-angled severities seemed plain to every one. But set on by his companions, who were showing him its defensive foundations, or in his own idle curiosity, Karl managed to fall into the Rhine and was fished out with difficulty. The immersion may have chilled his military ardor or soured his good humor, for later the consul heard that he had visited the American consular agent at an adjacent town with the old story of his American citizenship. “He seemed,” said the consul's colleague, “to be well posted about American railways and American towns, but he had no papers. He lounged around the office for a while and”—
“Wrote letters home?” suggested the consul, with a flash of reminiscence.
“Yes, the poor chap had no privacy at the barracks, and I reckon was overlooked or bedeviled.”
This was the last the consul heard of Karl Schwartz directly; for a week or two later he again fell into the Rhine, this time so fatally and effectually that in spite of the efforts of his companions he was swept away by the rapid current, and thus ended his service to his country. His body was never recovered.
A few months before the consul was transferred from Schlachtstadt to another post his memory of the departed Karl was revived by a visit from Adlerkreutz. The general looked grave.
“You remember Unser Karl?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Do you think he was an impostor?”
“As regards his American citizenship, yes! But I could not say more.”
“So!” said the general. “A very singular thing has happened,” he added, twirling his mustache. “The Inspector of police has notified us of the arrival of a Karl Schwartz in this town. It appears he is the REAL Karl Schwartz, identified by his sister as the only one. The other, who was drowned, was an impostor. Hein?”
“Then you have secured another recruit?” said the consul smilingly.
“No. For this one has already served his time in Elsass, where he went when he left here as a boy. But, Donnerwetter, why should that dumb fool take his name?”
“By chance, I fancy. Then he stupidly stuck to it, and had to take the responsibilities with it. Don't you see?” said the consul, pleased with his own cleverness.
“Zo-o!” said the general slowly, in his deepest voice. But the German exclamation has a variety of significance, according to the inflection, and Adlerkreutz's ejaculation seemed to contain them all.
It was in Paris,