The Hohenzollerns in America: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV

Uncle's art has failed. It was only yesterday that I was
writing in my memoirs of how cheerful and glad I felt to
think that Uncle William was going to be able to make
his living by art, and now everything is changed again.
All the time that Uncle was out on his visit to the
picture dealers, I was making plans and thinking what we
would do with the money when it came in, so it is very
disappointing to have it all come to nothing. I don't
know just what happened because Uncle William never gives
any details of things. His mind moves too rapidly for
that. But he came home with his pictures still under his
arm in a perfect fury and raged up and down his room,
using very dreadful language.

But after a little while when he grew calmer he explained
to me that the Americans are merely swineheads and that
art, especially art such as his, is wasted on them. Uncle
says that he has no wish to speak harshly of the Americans,
but they are pig-dogs. He bears them no ill-will, he
says, for what they have done and his heart is free of
any spirit of vengeance, but he wishes he had his heel
on their necks for about half a minute. He said this with
such a strange dreadful snarl that for the moment his
face seemed quite changed. But presently when he recovered
himself he got quite cheerful again, and said that it
was perhaps unseemly in him, as the guest of the American
people, to say anything against them. It is strange how
Uncle always refers to himself as the guest of the American
people. Living in this poor place, in these cheap
surroundings, it seems so odd. Often at our meals in the
noisy dining-room down in the basement, in the speeches
that he makes to the boarders, he talks of himself as
the guest of America and he says, "What does America ask
in return? Nothing." I can see that Mrs. O'Halloran, the
landlady, doesn't like this, because we have not paid
her anything for quite a long time, and she has spoken
to me about it in the corridor several times.

But when Uncle William makes speeches in the dining-room
I think the whole room becomes transformed for him into
the banquet room of a palace, and the cheap bracket lamps
against the wall turn into a blaze of light and the
boarders are all courtiers, and he becomes more and more
grandiloquent. He waves his hand towards Uncle Henry and
refers to him as "my brother the Admiral," and to me as
"the Princess at my side." Some of the people, the meaner
ones, begin to laugh and to whisper, and others look
uncomfortable and sorry. And it is always on these
occasions that Uncle William refers to himself as America's
guest, and refers to the Americans as the hospitable
nation who have taken him to their heart. I think that
when Uncle says this he really believes it; Uncle can
believe practically anything if he says it himself.

So, as I say, when he came home yesterday, after failing
to sell his pictures, he was at first furious and then
he fell into his other mood and he said that, as the
guest of a great people, he had found out at last the
return he could make to them. He said that he would
organise a School of Art, and as soon as he had got the
idea he was carried away with it at once and seized a
pencil and paper and began making plans for the school
and drawing up a list of the instructors needed. He asked
first who could be Principal, or President, of the School,
and decided that he would have to be that himself as he
knew of no one but himself who had the peculiar power of
organisation needed for it. All the technical instructors,
he said, must be absolutely the best, each one a master
in his own line. So he wrote down at the top of his list,
Instructor in Oils, and reflected a little, with his head
in his hand, as to who could do that. Presently he sighed
and said that as far as he knew there was no one; he'd
have to do that himself. Then he wrote down Instructor
in Water Colour, and as soon as he had written it he said
right off that he would have to take that over too; there
was no one else that he could trust it to. Then he said,
"Now, let me see, Perspective, Freehand, and Crayon Work.
I need three men: three men of the first class. Can I
get them? I doubt it. Let me think what can be done."

He walked up and down the room a little with his hands
behind his back and his head sunk in thought while he
murmured, "Three men? Three men? But Ha! why THREE? Why
not, if sufficiently gifted, ONE man?"

But just when he was saying this there was a knock at
the door and Mrs. O'Halloran came in. I knew at once what
she had come for, because she had been threatening to do
it, and so I felt dreadfully nervous when she began to
say that our bill at the house had gone unpaid too long
and that we must pay her at once what we owed her. It
took some time before Uncle William understood what she
was talking about, but when he did he became dreadfully
frigid and polite. He said, "Let me understand clearly,
madame, just what it is that you wish to say: do I
apprehend that you are saying that my account here for
our maintenance is now due and payable?" Mrs. O'Halloran
said yes, she was. And Uncle said, "Let me endeavour to
grasp your meaning exactly: am I correct in thinking that
you mean I owe you money?" Mrs. O'Halloran said that was
what she meant. Uncle said, "Let me try to apprehend just
as accurately as possible what it is that you are trying
to tell me: is my surmise correct that you are implying
that it is time that I settled up my bill?"

Mrs. O'Halloran said, "Yes," but I could see that by this
time she was getting quite flustered because there was
something so dreadfully chilling in Uncle's manner: his
tone in a way was courtesy itself, but there was something
in it calculated to make Mrs. O'Halloran feel that she
had committed a dreadful breach in what she had done.
Uncle William told me afterwards that to mention money
to a prince is not a permissible thing, and that no true
Hohenzollern has ever allowed the word "bill" to be said
in his presence, and that for this reason he had tried,
out of courtesy, to give the woman every chance to withdraw
her words and had only administered a reprimand to her
when she failed to do so. Certainly it was a dreadful
rebuke that he gave her. He told her that he must insist
on this topic being dismissed and never raised again:
that he could allow no such discussion: the subject was
one, he said, that he must absolutely refuse to entertain:
he did not wish, he said, to speak with undue severity,
but he had better make it plain that if there were any
renewal of this discussion he should feel it impossible
to remain in the house.

While Uncle William was saying all this Mrs. O'Halloran
was getting more and more confused and angry, and when
Uncle finally opened the door for her with cold dignity,
she backed out of it and found herself outside the room
without seeming to know what she was doing. Presently I
could hear her down in the scullery below, rattling dishes
and saying that she was just as good as anybody.

But Uncle William seemed to be wonderfully calmed and
elevated after this scene, and said, "Princess, bring me
my flute." I brought it to him and he sat by the window
and leaned his head out over the back lane and played
our dear old German melodies, till somebody threw a boot
at him. The people about here are not musical. But meantime
Uncle William had forgotten all about the School of Art,
and he said no more about it.

Next Day

To-day a dreadful thing has happened. The police have
come into the house and have taken Cousin Willie away.
He is now in a place called The Tombs, and Mr. Peters
says that he will be sent to the great prison at Sing-Sing.
He is to be tried for robbery and for stabbing with intent
to kill.

It was very dreadful when they came to take him. I was
so glad that Uncle William was not here to see it all.
But it was in the morning and he had gone out to see a
steamship company about being president of it, and I was
tidying up our rooms, because Mrs. O'Halloran won't tidy
them up any more or let the coloured servant tidy them
up until we pay her more money. She said that to me, but
I think she is afraid to say it to Uncle William. So I
mean to do the work now while Uncle is out and not let
him know.

This morning, in the middle of the morning, while I was
working, all of a sudden I heard the street door open
and slam and some one rushing up the stairway: and then
Cousin Willie broke into the room, all panting and excited,
and his face grey with fright and gasping out, "Hide me,
hide me!" He ran from room to room whining and hysterical,
and his breath coming in a sort of sob, but he seemed
incapable of deciding what to do. I would have hidden
him if I could, but at the very next moment I heard the
policemen coming in below, and the voice of the landlady.
Then they came upstairs, big strong-looking men in blue,
any one of whom could have choked Cousin Willie with one
hand. Cousin Willie ran to and fro like a cornered rat,
and two of the men seized him and then I think he must
have been beside himself with fear for I saw his teeth
bite into the man's hand that held him, and one of the
policemen struck him hard with his wooden club across
the head and he fell limp to the floor. They dragged him
down the stairway like that and I followed them down,
but there was nothing that I could do. I saw them lift
Cousin Willie into a closed black wagon that stood at
the street door with quite a little crowd of people
gathered about it already, all excited and leering as if
it were a show. And then they drove away with him and I
came in and went upstairs and sat down in Uncle's room
but I could not work any more. A little later on Mr.
Peters came to the house,--I don't know why, because it
was not for the ice as he had his other clothes on,--and
he came upstairs and sat down and told me about what had
happened. It seemed a strange thing to receive him upstairs
in Uncle's bedroom like that, but I was so upset that I
did not think about it at the time. Mr. Peters had been
on our street with his ice wagon when the police came,
though I did not see him. But he saw me, he said, standing
at the door. And I think he must have gone home and
changed his things and come back again, but I did not
ask him.

He told me that Cousin Willie had stabbed a man, or at
least a boy, that was in charge of a jewelry shop, and
that the boy might die. Cousin Willie, Mr. Peters says,
has been stealing jewelry nearly ever since we came here
and the police have been watching him but he did not know
this and so he had grown quite foolhardy, and this morning
in broad daylight he went into some sort of jewelry or
pawn shop where there was only a boy watching the shop,
and the boy was a cripple. Cousin Willie had planned to
hide the things under his coat and to sneak out but the
boy saw what he was doing and cried out, and when Cousin
Willie tried to break out of the shop he hobbled to the
door and threw himself in the way. And then it was that
Cousin Willie stabbed him with his sheath-knife,--the
one that I had seen in his room,--and ran. But already
there was a great outcry and the people followed on his
tracks and shouted to the police, and so they easily ran
him down.

All of this Mr. Peters told me, but he couldn't stay very
long and had to go again. He says he is going to see what
can be done for Cousin Willie but I am afraid that he
doesn't feel very sorry for him; but after Mr. Peters
had gone I could not help going on thinking about it all
and it seemed to me as if Cousin Willie had not altogether
had a fair chance in life. Common people are brought up
in fear of prison and punishment and they learn to do
what they should. But Cousin Willie was brought up as a
prince and was above imprisonment and things like that.
And in any case he seemed, when the big men seized hold
of him, such a paltry and miserable thing.

Later on in the day Uncle William came home and I had to
tell him all about Cousin Willie. I had feared that he
would be dreadfully upset, but he was much less disturbed
than I had thought. Indeed it is quite wonderful the way
in which Uncle can detach his mind from things.

I told him that Mr. Peters had said that Cousin Willie
must go to Sing-Sing, and Uncle said, "Ha! a fortress?"
So I told him that I thought it was. After that he asked
if Cousin Willie was in his uniform at the time, and when
I said that he was not, Uncle said "That may make it more
difficult." Of course Cousin Willie has no uniform here
in America and doesn't wear any, but I notice that Uncle
William begins to mix up our old life with our life here
and seems sometimes quite confused and wandering; at
least other people would think him so. He went on talking
quite a long time about what had happened and he said
that there is an almost exact precedent for the "incident"
(that's what he calls it) in the Zabern Case. I don't
remember much about that, as it was years ago, before
the war, but Uncle William said that it was a similar
case of an officer finding himself compelled to pass his
sword once through a cripple (only once, Uncle says) in
order to clear himself a way on the sidewalk. Uncle quoted
a good many other precedents for passing swords through
civilians, but he says that this is the best one.

In the evening Cousin Ferdinand and Uncle Henry came
over. Uncle Henry seemed very gloomy and depressed about
what had happened and said very little, but Cousin
Ferdinand was very much excited and angry. He said what
is the good of all his honesty and his industry if he is
to be disgraced like this: he asked of what use is his
uprightness and business integrity if he is to have a
first cousin in Sing-Sing. He said that if it was known
that he had a cousin there it would damage him with his
best trade to an incalculable extent. But later on he
quieted down and said that perhaps with a certain part
of his trade it would work the other way. Uncle Ferdinand
has grown to be much interested in what is called here
"advertising,"--a thing that he says all kings ought to
study--and he decided, after he had got over his first
indignation, that Cousin Willie being in Sing-Sing would
be a very good advertisement for him. It might bring him,
he said, quite a lot of new business; especially if it
was known that he refused to help Cousin Willie in any
way or to have anything more to do with any of the rest
of us, and not to give us any money. He said that this
was a point of view which people could respect and admire.

So before he went home he said that we must not expect
to see or hear from him any more, unless, of course,
things should in some way brighten up, in which case he
would come back.

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