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Made bold by an injudicious mixture of Herr Knapf's excellent beer, and a wonderful punch which Von Gerhard had concocted, Fritz mounted his chair, placed his plump hand over the spot where he supposed his heart to be, fastened his watery blue eyes upon my surprised and blushing countenance, and sang "Weh! Dass Wir Scheiden Mussen!" in an astonishingly beautiful barytone.
After I had given posies to Frau Nirlanger, and fastened a rose in Frau Knapf's hard knob of hair, where it bobbed in ludicrous discomfort, I still had enough to fill the washbowl. My room looked like a grand opera star's boudoir when she is expecting the newspaper reporters. I reveled in the glowing fragrance of the blossoms and felt very eastern and luxurious and popular.
I had learned to accept them, even to those obscure and foreign parts of turkey which are seen only on boarding-house plates, and which would be recognized nowhere else as belonging to that stately bird. Christmas at Knapf's had been a happy surprise; a day of hearty good cheer and kindness.
There were counterparts of my aborigines at Knapf's thick spectacled engineers with high foreheads actors and actresses from the German stock company reporters from the English and German newspapers business men with comfortable German consciences long-haired musicians dapper young lawyers a giggling group of college girls and boys a couple of smartly dressed women nibbling appreciatively at slices of Nusstorte low-voiced lovers whose coffee cups stood untouched at their elbows, while no fragrant cloud of steam rose to indicate that there was warmth within.
After one has seen them, one quite understands why the place is steeped in a German atmosphere up to its eyebrows. I never would have found it myself. It was Doctor von Gerhard who had suggested Knapf's, and who had paved the way for my coming here. "You will find it quite unlike anything you have ever tried before," he warned me. "Very German it is, and very, very clean, and most inexpensive.
But I was to find that here at Knapf's things were quite different. Not only was Ernst von Gerhard right in saying that it was "very German, and very, very clean;" he recognized good copy when he saw it. Types! I never dreamed that such faces existed outside of the old German woodcuts that one sees illustrating time-yellowed books.
"Dear girl, you must run quickly and dress. For this evening we go to the theater. Oh, but you must. There shall be no unpleasantness, that I promise. My husband accompanies us with joy. Is it not so, Konrad? With joy? So!" Wildly I longed to decline, but I dared not. So I only nodded, for fear of the great lump in my throat, and taking Frau Knapf's hand I turned and fled with her.
Therefore on my first day at Knapf's I went down to dinner in the evening, quite composed and secure in the knowledge that my collar was clean and that there was no flaw to find in the fit of my skirt in the back. As I opened the door of my room I heard sounds as of a violent altercation in progress downstairs. I leaned over the balusters and listened.
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