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We were on our way from Basle to Heidelberg, I remember, and Mr. Malt was commenting sarcastically upon Swiss resources for naming towns as exemplified in "Neuhausen." "There's a lot about this country," said Mr. Malt, "that reminds you of the world as it appeared about the time you built it for yourself every day with blocks, and made it lively with animals out of your Noah's Ark. I can't say what it is, but that's a sample of it—'New Houses!' What a baby baa-lamb name for a town! It would settle the municipality in our part of the world—any railway would make a circuit of fifty miles to avoid it!"
Mr. Mafferton and I had paused in our conversation, and these remarks reached us in full. They gave him the opportunity of bending a sympathetic glance upon me and saying, "How graphic your countrymen are, Miss Wick." Cologne was only three days off, but Mr. Mafferton never departed from the proprieties in his form of address. He was in that respect quite the most docile and respectful person I have ever found it necessary to keep in suspense.
I said they were not all as pictorial as Mr. Malt, and noticed that his eye was wandering. It had wandered to Miss Callis, who was snubbing the Count, and looking wonderfully well. I don't know whether I have mentioned that she had blue eyes and black hair, but her occupation, of course, would be becoming to anybody.
"And for the matter of that your country-women, too," said Mr. Mafferton. "I am much gratified to have the opportunity of making the acquaintance of another of them in this unexpected way. I find your friend, Miss Callis, a charming creature."
She wasn't my friend, but the moment did not seem opportune for saying so.
"I saw you talking a good deal to her yesterday," I said.
Mr. Mafferton twisted his moustache with a look of guilty satisfaction which I found hard to bear. "Must I cry Peccavi? " he said. "You see you were so—er—preoccupied. You said you would rather hear about the growth of the Swiss Confederacy and its relation to the Helvetia of the Ancients another day."
"That was quite true," I said indignantly.
"I found Miss Callis anxious to be informed without delay," said Mr. Mafferton, with a slightly rebuking accent. "She has a very open mind," he went on musingly.
"Oh, wonderfully," I said.
"And a highly retentive memory. It seems she was shown over our place in Surrey last summer. She described it to me in the most perfect detail. She must be very observant."
"She's as observant as ever she can be," I remarked. "I expect she could describe you in the most perfect detail too, if she tried." I sweetened this with an exterior smile, but I felt extremely rude inside.
"Oh, I fear I could not flatter myself—but how interesting that would be! One has always had a desire to know the impression one makes as a whole, so to speak, upon a fresh and unsophisticated young intelligence like that."
"Well," I said, "there isn't any reason why you shouldn't find out at once." For the Count had melted away, and Miss Callis was not nearly so much occupied with her novel as she appeared to be.
Mr. Mafferton rose, and again stroked his moustache, with a quizzical disciplinary air.
"Oh woman, in your hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please!"
He quoted. "You are a very whimsical young lady, but since you send me away I must abandon you."
"Thanks so much!" I said. "I mean—I have myself to blame, I know," and as Mr. Mafferton dropped into the seat opposite Miss Callis I saw Mrs. Portheris regard him austerely, as one for whom it was possible to make too much allowance.
In connection with Heidelberg I wish there were something authentic to say about Perkeo; but nobody would believe the quantity of wine he is supposed to have drunk in a day, which is the statement oftenest made about him, so it is of no consequence that I have forgotten the number of bottles. He isn't the patron saint of Heidelberg, because he only lived about a hundred and fifty years ago, and the first qualification for a patron saint is antiquity. As poppa says, there may be elderly gentlemen in Heidelberg now whose grandfathers have warned them against the personal habits of Perkeo from actual observation. Also we know that he was a court jester, and the pages of the Calendar, for some reason, are closed to persons in that walk of life. Judging by the evidences of his popularity that survive on all sides, Mr. Malt declared that he was probably worth more to the town in attracting residents and investors than half-a-dozen patron saints, and in this there may have been more truth than reverence. The Elector Charles Philip, whose court he jested for, certainly made no such mark upon his town and time as Perkeo did, and in that, perhaps, there is a moral for sovereigns, although the Senator advises me not to dwell upon it. At all events, one writes of Heidelberg but one thinks of Perkeo, as he swings from the sign-boards of the Haupt-Strasse, and stands on the lids of the beer mugs, and smiles from the extra-mural decoration of the wine shops, and lifts his glass, in eternally good wooden fellowship, beside the big Tun in the Castle cellar. There is a Hotel Perkeo, there must be Clubs Perkeo, probably a suburb and steamboats of the same name, and the local oath "Per Perkeo!" has a harmless sound, but nothing could be more binding in Heidelberg. Momma thought his example a very unfortunate one for a University town, but the rest of us were inclined to admire Perkeo as a self-made man and a success. As Dicky protested he had made the fullest use of the capacities Nature had given him, it was evident from his figure that he had even developed them, and what more profitable course should the German youth follow? He was cheerful everywhere—as the forerunner of the comic paper one supposes he had to be—but most impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of the methods of the professional humorists. Emmeline found him very like her father, and confided her impression to Mrs. Malt. "But of course," she added condoningly, "poppa was different when you married him."
Perkeo was not so sentimental as the Trumpeter of Sakkingen, and the Trumpeter of Sakkingen was not so sentimental as the Heidelberg University student. The Heidelberg University student was as a rule very round and very young, and he seemed to give up the whole of his spare time to imitating the passion which I hope has not been permitted to enter too largely into this book of travels.
Dicky and I agreed that it was a mere imitation; that is, Dicky said it was and I agreed. It could not possibly amount to anything more, for it consisted wholly in walking up and down in front of the house in which its object lived. We saw it being done, and it looked so uninteresting that we failed to realise what it meant until we inquired. Mrs. Portheris's nephew, Mr. Jarvis Portheris, who was acquiring German in Heidelberg, told us about it. Mrs. Portheris's nephew was just fourteen and small of his age, but he, too, had selected the lady of his admiration, and was taking regular daily pedestrian exercise in front of her residence. He pointed out the residence, and observed with an enormous frown that "another man" had usurped the pavement in his absence, and was doing it in quick step doubtless to show his ardour. "He's a beastly German too," said Mrs. Portheris's nephew, "so I can't challenge him, but I'll jolly well punch his head."
"Come on," said Dicky, "you'd better steady your nerves," and treated him liberally to ginger-beer and currant buns; but we were not allowed to see the encounter, which Mr. Jarvis Portheris, gratefully satiate, assured us must be conducted on strict lines of etiquette, with formal preliminaries. He was so very young, and obviously knew so little about what he was doing, that we questioned him with some delicacy, but we discovered that the practice had no parallel, as Dicky put it, for lack of incident. It was accompanied in some cases by the writing of poetry, "German poetry, of course," said Mrs. Portheris's nephew ineffably, but even that was more likely to be exhibited as evidence of the writer's fervid state of mind than to be sent to its object, who plaited her hair and attended to her domestic duties as if nobody were in the street but the fishmonger. In Mr. Jarvis Portheris's case he did not know the colour of her eyes, or the number of her years; he had selected her, it seemed, at a venture, in church, from a rear view, sitting; and had never seen her since. Dicky, whose predilections of this sort have always been very active, asked him seriously why he adhered to such a hollow mockery, and he said regretfully that a fellow more or less had to; it was one of the beastly nuisances of being educated abroad. But from what we saw of the German temperament generally we were convinced that as a native demonstration it was sincere, and that its idiocy arose only, as Dicky expressed it, from the remarkable lack in foreigners of business capacity.
We all congratulated ourselves on seeing Heidelberg while the University was in session, and we could observe the large fat students in flat blue and pink and green club caps, swaggering about the town accompanied by dogs of almost equal importance. The largest and fattest, I thought, wore white caps, and, though Mr. Jarvis Portheris said that white was the most aristocratic club's colour, they looked remarkably like bakers. The Senator had an object in Heidelberg, as he had in so many places, and that object was to investigate the practice of duelling, which everybody understands to prevail to a deadly extent among the students. It was plain from their appearance that personal assault at all events was regrettably common, for nearly everyone of them wore traces of it in their faces, wore them as if they were particularly becoming. Every variety of scar that could well be imagined was represented, some healed, some healing, and some freshly gory. The youth with the most scars, we observed, gave himself the most airs, and the really vainglorious were, more or less, obscured in cotton-wool, evidently just from the hands of the surgeon. The Senator examined them individually as they passed, with an inquisitiveness which they plainly enjoyed, and was much impressed with their fighting qualities as a race, until Mr. Jarvis Portheris happened to explain that the scars were very carefully given and received with an almost exclusive view to personal adornment. Mr. Mafferton appeared to have known this before; but that was an irritating way he had—none of the rest of us did. The Senator regarded the next youth he met, who had elongated his mouth to run up into his ear without adding in the least to his charms of appearance, with barely disguised contempt, and when Mr. Jarvis Portheris proceeded to explain how the doctors pulled open the cuts if they promised to heal without leaving any sign of valour, poppa's impatience with the noble army of duellists grew so great that he could hardly remain in Heidelberg till the train was ready to take him away.
"But don't they ever by accident do themselves any harm?" inquired my disappointed parent.
"There's one case on record," said Mr. Jarvis Portheris, "and everybody here says it's true. One fellow that was fighting happened to have a dog, and the dog was allowed in. Well, the other fellow, by accident, sliced off the end of the fellow that had the dog's nose—I don't mean the dog's nose, you know, but the fellow's. That was going a bit far, you know; they don't generally go so far. Well, the doctor said that would be all right, they could easily make it grow on again; but when they looked for the nose— the dog had eaten it! They never allow dogs in now."
It was a simple little story, and it bore marks of unmistakable age and many aliases, but it did much to reconcile the Senator to the University student of Heidelberg, and especially to his dog.