Chapter XXIV: News From the Fatherland

“With laughing mouth but tear-wet eye.”

There came a day when Phyl and Dolly dashed in from the Post-office with scarlet faces. There had been among the letters one with a queer German stamp upon it, and, secure in a deserted road, they had raced each other home as if they had still been in short frocks.

The news spread round the house, and the family gathered rapidly together from orchard, garden, and verandahs, for this was the boy’s first letter since his feet had touched on German soil.

In the hall impish Davey lingered with wistful eyes to catch a word or two, and out in the kitchen Mary said, “Bless the little chap!” and looked affectionately at a patch of ink he had one time spilt on her spotless dresser.

“_Wiesbaden_, “_Jan. the something or other_.

“Hello the all of you” (_the letter ran_),

“And how’s things out there? I expect you are all roasting. Well,
I’m not, and that’s a fact. Cold! Why, if I put my nose outside this
morning it would never come in again, the wind snaps so, and I’d
have a beard of icicles and a snow moustache in five jiffys. Did
you get my other letter? I posted two of them at places we stopped
at, I forgot the blessed names,—oh! one of them was in the Sandwich
Islands, I remember that, because a fellow stuffed me there were
natural sandwiches there growing on the Bread-fruit Palms. I never
get taken in now though; you can’t help it at first, everything’s so
queer. Then I posted again—only I didn’t put a stamp on, at the place
we left the ship,—I forget the name, but it’s in Italy. You got it,
didn’t you? Old Ollendorf’s a rummy fellow; we went to a town called
Rome (it’s in Italy too, not far from that other town), and he poked
about all day among the smashed-up places. He gets tears in his eyes
and blows his nose hard whenever he gets excited, and he gets excited
over everything. Well, the more smashed-up a place was the more he’d
cry. While we were in that town he was crying most of the time. I got
tired of it, so I left him saying ‘Ach Gott’ and ‘Himmel’ and such
things in front of a lot of dirty old pictures, and young Clinch and
me went to a circus. Mein vord, it _was_ a circus. They’d kick such
a thing out of Australia, but anything does for these old Rome people.

“Well, then, we went to another place, I forget the name—oh,
Florence, I think. Didn’t think much of it, but it’s not quite so
tumble-down as the what’s-it’s-name town. Oh, I didn’t tell you
about the river at the other place. Old Olly had spouted about
it, the Tiber it’s called, all the way in the train, and I really
thought I was going to see something at last. Well, when we’d had
something to eat, he carted me out on to a bridge to look at it.
I give you my word I thought he was having a lark with me. The
dirtiest, miserablest bit of a river you ever saw. I didn’t want to
catch typhoid, so I held my nose and turned round to see if he was
holding his. But he wasn’t. He was blowing it hard and crying. Yes,
by Shimminy. I told him he just ought to see our Hawkesbury.

“Well, about Florence. It’s got a lot of buildings and things in
it, and some of them look rather nice; they’re higher too than the
buildings in Sydney. Clinch and me got sick of mooning about with
Olly, and there was one of the waiters, a real good sort, going to a
place five miles off to see some races, so you bet we went too. But
the horses were as smashed-up as the buildings are—not a goer in the
lot, so it wasn’t much fun. Australia could put them up to a thing or
two on racing, my word.

“I get awfully sick of only hearing this blessed German talked. We’ve
settled down in this town now for three months, and even the slaveys
here jabber it. Young Clinch is only eight, but I feel I can talk to
him all day and all night just because he doesn’t jabber-jabber. I’m
getting pretty smart at it myself though; you have to, or go hungry
here, they’re such a blessed set of idiots. You don’t know how I
wanted some bull’s-eyes one day, and do you think I could make any
of the thick heads in three shops understand? They all kept telling
me to go to the butcher’s. When I come back I’ll have to get three
pounds of them straight off to make up.

“Aunt Helene’s awfully queer; she’s as old as anything you know, and
yet she’s always doing lessons and things. I go for a walk with her
every day, and she makes me do the jabber, and does it herself all
the time, so sometimes I don’t talk much. But _she_ does,—all the
questions and answers in the Conversation-book, and I know she goes
into the shops and buys things just so she can ask for them in German.

“Yesterday it was such a lark; we were mooning up and down the street
and a horse backed on to the pavement, and she bolted into the first
shop,—she’s the nervousest woman I ever saw,—bar those little donkeys
Phyl and Dolly. Well, she likes to be dignified too, so when the
shop-walker johnnie came up to her she pretended she’d just come in
to buy something. Well, every time she speaks to any one, this is her
regular jabber, only I’m saying it in English, the other stuff is too
hard to spell. ‘Guten morgen’ (that means good-morning). ‘It is a
cold wind. Winter draws near. It freezes. It has frozen last night.’
The shop-walker johnnie says, ‘Ja, es ist schönes wetter’ (that
means, yes, it is very fine weather)—of course he doesn’t understand
what she has been saying. Then he says, ‘Be seated, Frau’ (once she
got her hair off and said, ‘Frau_lein_, gefalligst’).

“Then she says, ‘Show me, if you please,—she’s got that part very
pat,—das gloves, des ribbons, dem lace,’ or whatever she wants. Only
this was a man’s shop, and there were only shirts and trousers or
things about. Well, I thought I’d help her out of a hole; I knew she
didn’t want anything at a shop like that, but I thought she wouldn’t
like to go out without buying something after bolting in like she
did. So I told her she’d better get me some trousers, I wanted some.
Well, she got so red I thought she must have forgotten the word
for them, so I pointed to some tweed stuff on the counter, and then
pointed at my legs, and a man at a counter understood in a jiffy,
and began to get some down. But Aunt turned round and walked out of
the shop, and I had to follow, of course, and the shop-people must
have thought we were cracked. What do you think it was? It wasn’t
that she’d forgotten the word for trousers, but I know now she’d have
rather died than have said it. ‘Never refer to such horrible things
in a mixed assembly, Alfred,’ she said. I’m always treading on her
corns, but how on earth was I to know _trousers_ weren’t proper?

“She’s as finicky as that over everything; after I’ve been in her
room for an hour I just rush out on the hill and shout, and howl, and
roll about, you get so bottled up. She’s not much to look at, her
hair’s any colour, and her eyes are lightish blue, and she always
looks as ill as anything. She’s not a bit like that likeness of
mother. She’s always getting new dresses, really spiffing ones, all
silk things with roses and flowers worked all over them, and lace
things and everything; jolly greedy of her never to have sent mother
any.

“This is what we do all day. Well, we’re not at a hotel now,
Grandfather’s tired of them; this is a private sort of a house in the
suburbs, only you pay them for keeping you. Well, every one gets up
at six except Grandfather, and we have some sort of meal—you can’t
call it breakfast. There’s no cloth, only a table and a box of sugar
on it, and a tray full of hot rolls and a big pot of coffee. We just
go and help ourselves, and then Aunt Helene settles down and plays
the hideousest and hardest things on the piano for two mortal hours,
and I moon round the garden and lark with the fellow who cleans the
boots, an awfully nice fellow. Then I hear her saying in her squeaky,
proper little voice, ‘To me if you please the young Herr Alfred send,
Elizabeth.’ And sometimes the young Herr Alfred hides so he can’t
be sent, but sometimes he goes, she looks so lonely plugging along
up the hill by herself. Well, we lug along for about an hour, and
plug into churches and lug into ruins and plug along the river,—it’s
called the Rhine. And then we plug back, and now we’ve come to an
agreement that if I jabber going, she talks English coming back. So
coming back I talk the most; only she doesn’t seem to like to hear
about all of you, so I can’t think of much to say.

“Then when you get in there’s another meal, about ten—you can’t call
this breakfast either, no porridge or eggs or anything decent, only
fruit and little cakes and stupid things. Grandfather is up then,
and we go out in an old rattle-your-bones for miles and see things.
Then there’s mittagessen when you get back—that’s dinner. It’s not
so bad ’cause you needn’t eat just what they do. They have raw ham
and raw smoked fish stuffed with vegetables, raw herrings and salad.
There’s soup and meat and proper things like we have, but in between
the meat courses the slaveys hand round some mad thing like pancakes
or ices. Sometimes they have pigeons or partridges, and then they
hand round an ass of a dish of boiled apricots or plums, and the
Germaners, not us, you bet, take some on their plate with the game,
and put lettuce on that, and oil and sugar on that, and then fall
to and eat it. We all have a salt-cellar each, but they don’t put
spoons in them, you’re expected to help yourself with your knife. Do
you remember dropping on to me for that, old mother?—I can see just
where I was sitting at the table; Dolly was dreaming away over her
meat and wouldn’t pass the salt, and I leaned across her to get some
on my knife. It was haricot mutton for dinner, I remember, and there
was Queen’s Pudding after, and Phyl served it and gave me the pyramid
piece of icing, and Freddie got tears in his eyes because he wanted
it. I hate them having things to eat here like we did at home; there
was a big sago pudding the other day, and it made me feel as funny
as anything to look at it, you all seemed so far away.

“Old mother, don’t you think if I get on fast and learn everything
I could come back soon? I keep remembering what the Pater said, but
it makes you feel pretty sick to think you’ve got to stop here for
always. There’s a man coming here from to-morrow to give me lessons,
and I’m not going to play any larks on him or anything. I’m just
going to do Latin and any mortal thing he sticks on to me. I’ll know
an awful lot in a year, old mother, if I work like that, and I’d soon
get a good billet in Sydney, specially now I know German talk. Get
him to let me come back, mother; what’s the good of tin to you when
you don’t want to spend it?
“Your affectionate son,
“Alf.”

Letters followed from week to week.

“_Jan. 19, Strasburg._

“Dear Mother,

“We came to this town for a few days; there’s rather a good clock
here, it would interest you. Grandfather isn’t well. He’s rather a
little man, and his nose is a bit like a hook, and he gets gout. I
don’t like him much. He’s always asking you the past participle of
_pouvoir_, and saying just when you’re enjoying your pudding, and
don’t want all the table to look at you, ‘Dative plural of a sharp
weapon?’

“I think he gives Aunt Helene a pretty bad time; he’s always jumping
on her, and sometimes he tells her she couldn’t get married because
no one would have her with such a temper as she’s got. She never
says anything back, I don’t believe she’s got a temper at all, and
she’s jolly nice to him and looks after him like anything. I believe
she’d like to get married to Vollmar—he’s the chap that’s started to
teach me music; he wouldn’t have her of course, he’s as young and
nice as anything, and he’s gone on young Clinch’s governess, they’re
stopping near us in Wiesbaden. When he comes for my lessons she
dresses herself up like anything and keeps coming in the room, and
sometimes she drops books so that he has to pick them up, and once
she pretended she was fainting, and he had to hold her up, and he
looked as if he didn’t like it. Wish she would get married—that would
be one lot of money less to wait here for.

“I’m getting on like anything, mother. I heard Grandfather say
yesterday, ‘And what do you think of your pupil’s capabilities,
Herr Oppenheim?’ And old Opp Beir,—he’s a decent old boy—said,
‘Cababeelitays,—ach, ya, he brogress along with dem first glass.’ And
I really am getting on, mother, I never grafted like this before.
I asked Grandfather to let me learn shorthand, and he was quite
pleased, and said it would be very useful if he decided to let me
have any active share in the firm. Was it mean of me, old mother? He
lets me learn anything, and I couldn’t tell him I wanted to learn
so that I could get a billet in Sydney. Don’t you think if I cram
very hard all June I could come back? I wouldn’t be any expense to
the Pater now; I know music and whips of things I usen’t to, and I
could easily get something to do, and p’raps help to pay Freddie’s
school bills. Dear old mother, do let me,—honour bright, I’ve tried
like anything not to want to come back, but it’s pretty awful. If you
see a girl go running down the street and her hair’s brown you can’t
help thinking of Weenie. Sometimes just flowers make you feel sick;
there’s some here in the garden, and they’re jonquils like those old
Clif brought home for you that day, and I never go to that part of
the garden.
“Your loving old Alf.”

“_Same old Veesbaden, March 30._

“Darling old Mother, and all of you,

“Grandfather’s better again, but Aunt Helene is pretty ill. She
never goes walks now, but lies on the sofa nearly all the time. She
likes me to talk to her and tell her about my lessons, especially
my music. The doctor said to Grandfather last week she ought to go
for a sea-voyage, and said, ‘Take a run to Australia.’ My scrimmy, I
couldn’t help turning straight head over heels, and I made an awful
row, and Grandfather swore like anything. Then the doctor said if
we came straight away now she’d escape the rest of the cold weather
here, and I nearly turned over again. Oh, my scrimmy, think of seeing
you all in a month or two! Grandfather growled like anything, he
doesn’t seem to think any one but himself ought to be ill, and he
said he was very comfortable where he was, and he wasn’t going to lay
himself open to sea-sickness. And so I told him there was a fellow
when we came out, and he used to put cotton-wool in his ears and
wear smoked glasses, and pretend hard to himself for three days that
he was right away up country, and he was never sick at all hardly.
And Grandfather gave a roar at me and said, ‘Clear out.’ You never
know where to take that chap. I laid for the doctor, he’s a very
nice fellow, and I told him I thought Aunt ought to go the voyage
at once; she hardly ate anything at dinner, and there was roast
quales and things. And I told him I’d look after her like anything if
Grandfather liked to stop behind. I went round with him in his buggy
to all his places, and he talked and was as nice as anything; he said
he’d like to see Phyl and Dolly writing in that room old Clif and Ted
built; and I’d got that photo of Weenie up a tree in my pocket that
old Ted took, and he said she looked like the little youthful maiden
Hiney wrote about. Hiney’s a poet that lives somewhere out here, I
think, you often hear people talking about him. Well, the old brick
said he’d try to persuade Grandfather to come, he said the voyage
would do him good too. He’s a real Briton, that man, although he’s
made in Germany. I’ll keep letting you know things as fast as I find
them out.”