Introducing Scenes from a Foreign Country, and also conveying Welcome Intelligence, together with some Instruction
It was at a little village perched well up on one of the carriage-roads ascending the Brocken, a fortnight or so ago, that I received a wire from Uncle Dudley. It was kind of him to think of it—all the more as he had good news to tell. “Family lighted square on their feet,” was what the message said, and I was glad to gather from this that the Grundys had weathered their misfortunes, and that Mrs Albert was herself again.
The thought was full of charm. It seemed as if I had never realised before how fond I was of these good people. In sober fact; I dare say that I had not dwelt much upon their woes during my holiday. But now, with this affectionately thoughtful telegram addressing me as their oldest friend, the one whom they wished to be the first to share the joy of their rescued state, it was easy enough to make myself believe that my whole vacation had been darkened with brooding over their unhappiness.
It had not occurred to me before, but that was undoubtedly why I had not liked the Harz so much this year as usual. Now that I thought of it, walking down the birch-lined footpath towards the hamlet and the telegraph office, the place seemed to have gone off a good deal. In other seasons, before the spectre of cholera flooded its sylvan retreats with an invading horde of Hamburgers, the Harzwald had been my favourite resort. I had grown to love its fir-clad slopes, its shadowed glens, its atmosphere of prehistoric myth and legend, as if I were part and product of them all. Its people, too, had come much nearer to my breast than any other Germans ever could. I had enjoyed being with them just because they were what the local schoolmaster disdainfully declared them to be—Erdzertrümmerungsprozeszuribekanntevolk—that is to say, people entirely ignorant of the scientific theories about geological upheavals and volcanic formations, and so able cheerfully to put their trust in the goblins who reared these strange boulders in fantastic piles on every hill top, and to hear with good faith the shouts of the witches as they bounded over the Hexentanzplatz. Last year it had seemed even worth the added discomfort of the swarming Hamburgers to be again in this wholesome, sweet-aired primitive place. But this year—I saw now clearly as I looked over Uncle Dudley’s message once more—it had not been so pleasant. The hotel boy, Fritzchen, whom I had watched year after year with the warmth of a fatherly well-wisher—smiling with satisfaction at his jovial countenance, his bustling and competent ways, and his comical attempts at English—had this season swollen up into a burly and consequential lout, with a straw-coloured sprouting on his upper-lip, and a military manner. They called him Fritz now, and he gave me beer out of the old keg after I had heard the new one tapped.
The evening gatherings of the villagers in the hotel, too, were not amusing as they once had been. The huge lion-maned and grossly over-bearded Kantor, or music-master, who came regularly at nightfall to thump on the table with his bludgeon-like walking stick, to roar forth impassioned monologues on religion and politics, and to bellow ceaselessly at Fritzchen for more beer, had formerly delighted me. This time he seemed only a noisy nuisance, and the half-circle of grave old retired foresters and middle-aged Jàger officers who sat watching him over their pipes, striving vainly now and again to get in a word edgewise about the auctions of felled trees in the woods, or the mutinous tendencies of the charcoal-burners, presented themselves in the light of tiresome prigs. If they had been worth their salt, I felt, they would long ago have brained the Kantor with their stoneware mugs. Even as I walked I began to be conscious that a three weeks’ stay in the Harz was a good deal of time, and that the remaining third would certainly hang on my hands.
By the time I reached the telegraph station I had my answer to Uncle Dudley ready in my mind. He liked the forcible imagery of Australia and the Far West; and I would speak to him at this joyful juncture after his own heart. It seemed that I could best do this by giving him to understand that I was celebrating his news—that I was, in one of his own phrases, “painting the town red.” It required some ingenuity to work this idea out right, but I finally wrote what appeared to answer the purpose:—“Brocken und Umgebung sind roth gemalen”—and handed it in to the man at the window.
He was a young man with close-cropped yellow hair and spectacles, holding his chin and neck very stiff in the high collar of his uniform. He glanced over my despatch, at first with careless dignity. Then he read it again attentively. Then he laid it on the table, and bent his tight-buttoned form over it as well as might be in a severe and prolonged scrutiny. At last he raised himself, turned a petrifying gaze on through his glasses at me, and shook his head.
“It is not true,” he said. “Some one has you deceived.”
“But,” I tried to explain to him, with the little German that I knew scattering itself in all directions in the face of this crisis, “it is a figure of speech, a joke, a——”
The telegraph man stared coldly at my luckless despatch, and then at me. “You would wish to state to your friend, perhaps,” he suggested, “that they seem as if they had been coloured with red, owing to the change in the leaves.”
“No, no,” I put in. “It must be that they have been painted, are painted, or he will not me understand.”
“But, my good sir,” retorted the operator with emphasis, “they are not painted! From the door gaze you forth! What make you with this nonsense, that Brocken and vicinity are red painte............