We can see her straight white frock, her plump brown legs in
socks (not reaching the floor as she sat), her tawny golden hair
with a red ribbon. The two dusty vagabonds watched her, and her
important-looking adults, from afar. We have only the vaguest
impression of her father: he was erect and handsome and not
untouched with pride. (Heavens, were they some minor offshoot of the
Hohenzollern tribe?) We can see the head waiter smirking near their
table. Across nine years and thousands of miles they still radiate
to us a faint sense of prosperity and breeding; and the child was
like a princess in a fairy-tale. Ah, if only it had all been a
fairy-tale. Could we but turn back the clock to that summer evening
when the dim pine-alleys smelled so resinous on the Muehlberg, turn
back the flow of that quick blue river, turn back history itself and
rewrite it in chapters fit for the clear eyes of that child we saw.
Well, we are growing grievous: it is time to go out and have some
cider. There are many other admirable inns we might soliloquize--The
_Seven Stars_ in Rotterdam (Molensteeg 19, "nabij het Postkantoor");
_Gibson's Hotel_, Rutland Square, Edinburgh ("Well adapted for
Marriages," says its card); the _Hotel Davenport_, Stamford,
Connecticut, where so many palpitating playwrights have sat
nervously waiting for the opening performance; the _Tannhaeuser
Hotel_ in Heidelberg, notable for the affability of the
chambermaids.
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