The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories

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"Was wollen Sie?"

"I want to see the proprietor," said Mr. Clinch, choking back his rage.

There was a pause, and the figure turned apparently to consult with
some one behind the battlements. After a moment he reappeared, and in a
perfunctory monotone, with an occasional breathing spell on the trumpet,
began,--

"You do give warranty as a good knight and true, as well as by the bones
of the blessed St. Ursula, that you bear no ill will, secret enmity,
wicked misprise or conspiracy, against the body of our noble lord
and master Von Kolnsche? And you bring with you no ambush, siege, or
surprise of retainers, neither secret warrant nor lettres de cachet, nor
carry on your knightly person poisoned dagger, magic ring, witch-powder,
nor enchanted bullet, and that you have entered into no unhallowed
alliance with the Prince of Darkness, gnomes, hexies, dragons, Undines,
Loreleis, nor the like?"

"Come down out of that, you d----d old fool!" roared Mr. Clinch, now
perfectly beside himself with rage,--"come down, and let me in!"

As Mr. Clinch shouted out the last words, confused cries of recognition
and welcome, not unmixed with some consternation, rose from the
battlements: "Ach Gott!" "Mutter Gott--it is he! It is Jann, Der
Wanderer. It is himself." The chains rattled, the ponderous drawbridge
creaked and dropped; and across it a medley of motley figures rushed
pellmell. But, foremost among them, the very maiden whom he had left not
ten minutes before flew into his arms, and with a cry of joyful greeting
sank upon his breast. Mr. Clinch looked down upon the fair head and long
braids. It certainly was the same maiden, his cruel enchantress; but
where did she get those absurd garments?

"Willkommen," said a stout figure, advancing with some authority, and
seizing his disengaged hand, "where hast thou been so long?"

Mr. Clinch, by no means placated, coldly dropped the extended hand.
It was NOT the proprietor he had known. But there was a singular
resemblance in his face to some one of Mr. Clinch's own kin; but who,
he could not remember. "May I take the liberty of asking your name?" he
asked coldly.

The figure grinned. "Surely; but, if thou standest upon punctilio, it
is for ME to ask thine, most noble Freiherr," said he, winking upon his
retainers. "Whom have I the honor of entertaining?"

"My name is Clinch,--James Clinch of Chicago, Ill."

A shout of laughter followed. In the midst of his rage and mortification
Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and annoyance flit across the
face of the maiden. He was puzzled, but pressed her hand, in spite of
his late experiences, reassuringly. She made a gesture of silence to
him, and then slipped away in the crowd.

"Schames K'l'n'sche von Schekargo," mimicked the figure, to the
unspeakable delight of his retainers. "So! THAT is the latest French
style. Holy St. Ursula! Hark ye, nephew! I am not a travelled man. Since
the Crusades we simple Rhine gentlemen have staid at home. But I call
myself Kolnsche of Koln, at your service."

"Very likely you are right," said Mr. Clinch hotly, disregarding the
caution of his fair companion; "but, whoever YOU are, I am a stranger
entitled to protection. I have been robbed."

If Mr. Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry
statement, it could not have been more hilariously received. He paused,
grew confused, and then went on hesitatingly,--

"In place of my papers and credentials I find only these." And he
produced the jewelry from his pockets.

Another shout of laughter and clapping of hands followed this second
speech; and the baron, with a wink at his retainers, prolonged the
general mirth by saying, "By the way, nephew, there is little doubt but
there has been robbery--somewhere."

"It was done," continued Mr. Clinch, hurrying to make an end of his
explanation, "while I was inadvertently overcome with liquor,--drugged
liquor."

The laughter here was so uproarious that the baron, albeit with tears
of laughter in his own eyes, made a peremptory gesture of silence. The
gesture was peculiar to the baron, efficacious and simple. It consisted
merely in knocking down the nearest laugher. Having thus restored
tranquillity, he strode forward, and took Mr. Clinch by the hand. "By
St. Adolph, I did doubt thee a moment ago, nephew; but this last frank
confession of thine shows me I did thee wrong. Willkommen zu Hause,
Jann, drunk or sober, willcommen zu Cracowen."

More and more mystified, but convinced of the folly of any further
explanation, Mr. Clinch took the extended hand of his alleged uncle, and
permitted himself to be led into the castle. They passed into a large
banqueting-hall adorned with armor and implements of the chase. Mr.
Clinch could not help noticing, that, although the appointments were
liberal and picturesque, the ventilation was bad, and the smoke from the
huge chimney made the air murky. The oaken tables, massive in carving
and rich in color, were unmistakably greasy; and Mr. Clinch slipped on
a piece of meat that one of the dozen half-wild dogs who were occupying
the room was tearing on the floor. The dog, yelping, ran between the
legs of a retainer, precipitating him upon the baron, who instantly,
with the "equal foot" of fate, kicked him and the dog into a corner.

"And whence came you last?" asked the baron, disregarding the little
contretemps, and throwing himself heavily on an oaken settle, while
he pushed a queer, uncomfortable-looking stool, with legs like a
Siamese-twin-connected double X, towards his companion.

Mr. Clinch, who had quite given himself up to fate, answered
mechanically,--

"Paris."

The baron winked his eye with unutterable, elderly wickedness. "Ach
Gott! it is nothing to what it was when I was your age. Ah! there was
Manon,--Sieur Manon we used to call her. I suppose she's getting old
now. How goes on the feud between the students and the citizens? Eh? Did
you go to the bal in la Cite?"

Mr. Clinch stopped the flow of those Justice-Shallow-like reminiscences
by an uneasy exclamation. He was thinking of the maiden who had
disappeared so suddenly. The baron misinterpreted his nervousness. "What
ho, within there!--Max, Wolfgang,--lazy rascals! Bring some wine."

At the baleful word Mr. Clinch started to his feet. "Not for me! Bring
me none of your body-and-soul-destroying poison! I've enough of it!"

The baron stared. The servitors stared also.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Clinch, recalling himself slowly; "but I
fear that Rhine wine does not agree with me."

The baron grinned. Perceiving, however, that the three servitors grinned
also, he kicked two of them into obscurity, and felled the third to
the floor with his fist. "Hark ye, nephew," he said, turning to the
astonished Clinch, "give over this nonsense! By the mitre of Bishop
Hatto, thou art as big a fool as he!"

"Hatto," repeated Clinch mechanically. "What! he of the Mouse Tower?"

"Ay, of the Mouse Tower!" sneered the baron. "I see you know the story."

"Why am I like him?" asked Mr. Clinch in amazement.

The baron grinned. "HE punished the Rhenish wine as thou dost, without
judgment. He had--"

"The jim-jams," said Mr. Clinch mechanically again.

The baron frowned. "I know not what gibberish thou sayest by 'jim-jams';
but he had, like thee, the wildest fantasies and imaginings; saw snakes,
toads, rats, in his boots, but principally rats; said they pursued him,
came to his room, his bed--ach Gott!"

"Oh!" said Mr. Clinch, with a sudden return to his firmer self and his
native inquiring habits; "then THAT is the fact about Bishop Hatto of
the story?"

"His enemies made it the subject of a vile slander of an old friend of
mine," said the baron; "and those cursed poets, who believe everything,
and then persuade others to do so,--may the Devil fly away with
them!--kept it up."

Here were facts quite to Mr. Clinch's sceptical mind. He forgot himself
and his surroundings.

"And that story of the Drachenfels?" he asked insinuatingly,--"the
dragon, you know. Was he too--"

The baron grinned. "A boar transformed by the drunken brains of the
Bauers of the Siebengebirge. Ach Gott! Ottefried had many a hearty laugh
over it; and it did him, as thou knowest, good service with the nervous
mother of the silly maiden."

"And the seven sisters of Schonberg?" asked Mr. Clinch persuasively.

"'Schonberg! Seven sisters!' What of them?" demanded the baron sharply.

"Why, you know,--the maidens who were so coy to their suitors,
and--don't you remember?--jumped into the Rhine to avoid them."

"'Coy? Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors'?" roared the baron,
purple with rage. "Hark ye, nephew! I like not this jesting. Thou
knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy father. How
'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap WE might tell
another story. Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou art where a
petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do other than he did.
And THIS is his reward? Ach Gott! 'Coy!' And THIS, I warrant, is the way
the story is delivered in Paris."

Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in a
guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the explanation.
Besides, he was on the eve of historic information; he was, as it were,
interviewing the past; and, whether he would ever be able to profit by
the opportunity or not, he could not bear to lose it. "And how about the
Lorelei--is she, too, a fiction?" he asked glibly.

"It was said," observed the baron sardonically, "that when thou
disappeared with the gamekeeper's daughter at Obercassel--Heaven knows
where!--thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some creature. Ach
Gott! I believe it! But a truce to this balderdash. And so thou wantest
to know of the 'coy' sisters of Schoenberg? Hark ye, Jann, that cousin
of thine is a Schonberg. Call you her 'coy'? Did I not see thy greeting?
Eh? By St. Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call
you her greeting 'coy'?"

Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt that
his explanation would hardly relieve the maiden from deceit, or himself
from weakness. But out of his very perplexity and turmoil a bright idea
was born. He turned to the baron,--

"Then you have no faith in the Rhine legends?"

The baron only replied with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.

"But what if I told you a new one?"

"You?"

"Yes; a part of my experience?"

The baron was curious. It was early in the afternoon, just after dinner.
He might be worse bored.

"I've only one condition," added Mr. Clinch: "the young lady--I mean, of
course, my cousin--must hear it too."

"Oh, ay! I see. Of course--the old trick! Well, call the jade. But mark
ye, Sir Nephew, no enchanted maidens and knights. Keep to thyself. Be as
thou art, vagabond Jann Kolnische, knight of the road.--What ho there,
scoundrels! Call the Lady Wilhemina."

It was the first time Mr. Clinch had heard his fair friend's name; but
it was not, evidently, the first time she had seen him, as the very
decided wink the gentle maiden dropped him testified. Nevertheless,
with hands lightly clasped together, and downcast eyes, she stood before
them.

Mr. Clinch began. Without heeding the baron's scornful grin, he
graphically described his meeting, two years before, with a Lorelei, her
usual pressing invitation, and his subsequent plunge into the Rhine.

"I am free to confess," added Mr. Clinch, with an affecting glance to
Wilhelmina, "that I was not enamoured of the graces of the lady, but was
actuated by my desire to travel, and explore hitherto unknown regions. I
wished to travel, to visit--"

"Paris," interrupted the baron sarcastically.

"America," continued Mr. Clinch.

"What?"--"America."

"'Tis a gnome-like sounding name, this Meriker. Go on, nephew: tell us
of Meriker."

With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described his
landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and Hell
Gate, East River, New York. He described the railways, tram-ways,
telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone. An occasional oath broke
from the baron, but he listened attentively; and in a few moments Mr.
Clinch had the raconteur's satisfaction of seeing the vast hall slowly
filling with open-eyed and open-mouthed retainers hanging upon his
words. Mr. Clinch went on to describe his astonishment at meeting on
these very shores some of his own blood and kin. "In fact," said Mr.
Clinch, "here were a race calling themselves 'Clinch,' but all claiming
to have descended from Kolnische."

"And how?" sneered the baron.

"Through James Kolnische and Wilhelmina his wife," returned Mr. Clinch
boldly. "They emigrated from Koln and Crefeld to Philadelphia, where
there is a quarter named Crefeld." Mr. Clinch felt himself shaky as to
his chronology, but wisely remembered that it was a chronology of the
future to his hearers, and they could not detect an anachronism. With
his eyes fixed upon those of the gentle Wilhelmina, Mr. Clinch now
proceeded to describe his return to his fatherland, but his astonishment
at finding the very face of the country changed, and a city standing
on those fields he had played in as a boy; and how he had wandered
hopelessly on, until he at last sat wearily down in a humble cottage
built upon the ruins of a lordly castle. "So utterly travel-worn and
weak had I become," said Mr. Clinch, with adroitly simulated pathos,
"that a single glass of wine offered me by the simple cottage maiden
affected me like a prolonged debauch."

A long-drawn snore was all that followed this affecting climax. The
baron was asleep; the retainers were also asleep. Only one pair of eyes
remained open,--arch, luminous, blue,--Wilhelmina's.

"There is a subterranean passage below us to Linn. Let us fly!" she
whispered.

"But why?"

"They always do it in the legends," she murmured modestly.

"But your father?"

"He sleeps. Do you not hear him?"

Certainly somebody was snoring. But, oddly enough, it seemed to be
Wilhelmina. Mr. Clinch suggested this to her.

"Fool, it is yourself!"

Mr. Clinch, struck with the idea, stopped to consider. She was right. It
certainly WAS himself.

With a struggle he awoke. The sun was shining. The maiden was looking at
him. But the castle--the castle was gone!

"You have slept well," said the maiden archly. "Everybody does after
dinner at Sammtstadt. Father has just awakened, and is coming."

Mr. Clinch stared at the maiden, at the terrace, at the sky, at the
distant chimneys of Sammtstadt, at the more distant Rhine, at the table
before him, and finally at the empty glass. The maiden smiled. "Tell
me," said Mr. Clinch, looking in her eyes, "is there a secret passage
underground between this place and the Castle of Linn?"

"An underground passage?"

"Ay--whence the daughter of the house fled with a stranger knight."

"They say there is," said the maiden, with a gentle blush.

"Can you show it to me?"

She hesitated. "Papa is coming: I'll ask him."

I presume she did. At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs me of
a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and Kolnische of
Koln; and there is an amusing story extant in the Verein at Sammtstadt,
of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines, who mistook a flask of Cognac
and rock-candy, used for "craftily qualifying" lower grades of wine to
the American standard, for the rarest Rudesheimerberg.




VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION


Outside of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel
with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain
unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people who
pass, without any reciprocal disclosure of their own. The men and women
hurrying by not only do not know they are observed, but, what is worse,
do not even see their own reflection in this hypocritical plane, and
are consequently unable, through its aid, to correct any carelessness
of garb, gait, or demeanor. At first this seems to be taking an unfair
advantage of the human animal, who invariably assumes an attitude
when he is conscious of being under human focus. But I observe that my
neighbors' windows, right and left, have a similar apparatus, that this
custom is evidently a local one, and the locality is German. Being
an American stranger, I am quite willing to leave the morality of the
transaction with the locality, and adapt myself to the custom: indeed,
I had thought of offering it, figuratively, as an excuse for any
unfairness of observation I might make in these pages. But my German
mirrors reflect without prejudice, selection, or comment; and the
American eye, I fear, is but mortal, and like all mortal eyes,
figuratively as well as in that literal fact noted by an eminent
scientific authority, infinitely inferior to the work of the best German
opticians.

And this leads me to my first observation, namely, that a majority of
those who pass my mirror have weak eyes, and have already invoked the
aid of the optician. Why are these people, physically in all else so
much stronger than my countrymen, deficient in eyesight? Or, to omit the
passing testimony of my Spion, and take my own personal experience, why
does my young friend Max, brightest of all schoolboys, who already
wears the cap that denotes the highest class,--why does he shock me by
suddenly drawing forth a pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy
face would be an obvious mocking imitation of the Herr Papa--if German
children could ever, by any possibility, be irreverent? Or why does the
Fraulein Marie, his sister, pink as Aurora, round as Hebe, suddenly
veil her blue eyes with a golden lorgnette in the midst of our polyglot
conversation? Is it to evade the direct, admiring glance of the
impulsive American? Dare I say NO? Dare I say that that frank, clear,
honest, earnest return of the eye, which has on the Continent most
unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under criticism, is quite as
common to her more carefully-guarded, tradition-hedged German sisters?
No, it is not that. Is it any thing in these emerald and opal tinted
skies, which seem so unreal to the American eye, and for the first time
explain what seemed the unreality of German art? in these mysterious yet
restful Rhine fogs, which prolong the twilight, and hang the curtain
of romance even over mid-day? Surely not. Is it not rather, O Herr
Professor profound in analogy and philosophy!--is it not rather
this abominable black-letter, this elsewhere-discarded, uncouth,
slowly-decaying text known as the German Alphabet, that plucks out the
bright eyes of youth, and bristles the gateways of your language with a
chevaux de frise of splintered rubbish? Why must I hesitate whether it
is an accident of the printer's press, or the poor quality of the paper,
that makes this letter a "k" or a "t"? Why must I halt in an emotion or
a thought because "s" and "f" are so nearly alike? Is it not enough that
I, an impulsive American, accustomed to do a thing first, and reflect
upon it afterwards, must grope my way through a blind alley of
substantives and adjectives, only to find the verb of action in an
obscure corner, without ruining my eyesight in the groping?

But I dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active
resentment. This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my Spion,
harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully at a
burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it would seem a
burlesque, but for the poor dog's sad sincerity. Perhaps it is because
I have the barbarian's fondness for dogs, and for their lawless, gentle,
loving uselessness, that I rebel against this unnatural servitude. It
seems as monstrous as if a child were put between the shafts, and made
to carry burdens; and I have come to regard those men and women, who in
the weakest perfunctory way affect to aid the poor brute by laying
idle hands on the barrow behind, as I would unnatural parents.
Pegasus harnessed to the Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a
desecration. I fancy the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the
performance, and, in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to
assume it is PLAY; and I have seen a little "colley" running along,
barking, and endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load
that any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty.
Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to
it. When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the dog,
either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the shafts, or
by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly scatters any such delusion
of even the habit of servitude. The few of his race who do not work in
this ducal city seem to have lost their democratic canine sympathies,
and look upon him with something of that indifferent calm with which
yonder officer eyes the road-mender in the ditch below him. He loses
even the characteristics of species. The common cur and mastiff look
alike in harness. The burden levels all distinctions. I have said that
he was generally sincere in his efforts. I recall but one instance to
the contrary. I remember a young colley who first attracted my attention
by his persistent barking. Whether he did this, as the plough-boy
whistled, "for want of thought," or whether it was a running protest
against his occupation, I could not determine, until one day I noticed,
that, in barking, he slightly threw up his neck and shoulders, and that
the two-wheeled barrow-like vehicle behind him, having its weight evenly
poised on the wheels by the trucks in the hands of its driver, enabled
him by this movement to cunningly throw the center of gravity and the
greater weight on the man,--a fact which that less sagacious brute never
discerned. Perhaps I am using a strong expression regarding his driver.
It may be that the purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food,
care, and shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in
freedom; becoming a valuable and useful property, he may be cared for
and protected as such (an odd recollection that this argument had been
used forcibly in regard to human slavery in my own country strikes me
here); but his picturesqueness and poetry are gone, and I cannot
help thinking that the people who have lost this gentle, sympathetic,
characteristic figure from their domestic life and surroundings have not
acquired an equal gain through his harsh labors.

To the American eye there is, throughout the length and breadth of
this foreign city, no more notable and striking object than the average
German house-servant. It is not that she has passed my Spion a dozen
times within the last hour,--for here she is messenger, porter, and
commissionnaire, as well as housemaid and cook,--but that she is always
a phenomenon to the American stranger, accustomed to be abused in
his own country by his foreign Irish handmaiden. Her presence is as
refreshing and grateful as the morning light, and as inevitable and
regular. When I add that with the novelty of being well served is
combined the satisfaction of knowing that you have in your household an
intelligent being who reads and writes with fluency, and yet does not
abstract your books, nor criticise your literary composition; who is
cleanly clad, and neat in her person, without the suspicion of having
borrowed her mistress's dresses; who may be good-looking without the
least imputation of coquetry or addition to her followers; who is
obedient without servility, polite without flattery, willing and replete
with supererogatory performance, without the expectation of immediate
pecuniary return, what wonder that the American householder translated
into German life feels himself in a new Eden of domestic possibilities
unrealized in any other country, and begins to believe in a present and
future of domestic happiness! What wonder that the American bachelor
living in German lodgings feels half the terrors of the conjugal future
removed, and rushes madly into love--and housekeeping! What wonder that
I, a long-suffering and patient master, who have been served by the
reticent but too imitative Chinaman; who have been "Massa" to the
childlike but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the
brotherly but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and
have been proudly disregarded by the American aborigine, only in due
time to meet the fate of my countrymen at the hands of Bridget the
Celt,--what wonder that I gladly seize this opportunity to sing the
praises of my German handmaid! Honor to thee, Lenchen, wherever
thou goest! Heaven bless thee in thy walks abroad! whether with that
tightly-booted cavalryman in thy Sunday gown and best, or in blue
polka-dotted apron and bare head as thou trottest nimbly on mine
errands,--errands which Bridget o'Flaherty would scorn to undertake, or,
undertaking, would hopelessly blunder in. Heaven bless thee, child,
in thy early risings and in thy later sittings, at thy festive board
overflowing with Essig and Fett, in the mysteries of thy Kuchen, in the
fulness of thy Bier, and in thy nightly suffocations beneath mountainous
and multitudinous feathers! Good, honest, simple-minded, cheerful,
duty-loving Lenchen! Have not thy brothers, strong and dutiful as thou,
lent their gravity and earnestness to sweeten and strengthen the fierce
youth of the Republic beyond the seas? and shall not thy children
inherit the broad prairies that still wait for them, and discover the
fatness thereof, and send a portion transmuted in glittering shekels
back to thee?