The White Morning | Page 2

she had been "in
and out of the house" for nearly a year. The young Prussians had
alternately gasped and wept at the amazing stories of the liberty, the
petting, the procession of "good times" enjoyed by American girls of
their own class, to say nothing of the invariable prerogative of these
fortunate girls to choose their own husbands; who, according to the
unprincipled Miss Terriss, invariably spoiled their wives, and permitted
them to go and come, to spend their large personal allowances, as they
listed. Gisela closed her beloved volume of Grimm's fairy tales and
never opened it again.
But it was the visit of Mariette that had marshalled vague
dissatisfactions to an ordered climax. She had left her husband in the
garrison town she had married with the excellent young officer, making
a trifling indisposition of her mother a pretext for escape. On the night
before her departure the four girls huddled in her bed after the opera
and listened to an incisive account of her brief but distasteful period of
matrimony. Not that she suffered from tyranny. Quite the reverse. Of
her several suitors she had cannily engineered into her father's favor a
young man of pleasing appearance, good title and fortune, but quite
without character behind his fierce upstanding mustache. Inheriting her
father's rigid will, she had kept the young officer in a state of abject

submission. She stroked his hair in public as if he had been her pet
dachshund, and patted his hand at kindly intervals as had he been her
dear little son.
"But Karl has the soul of a sheep," she informed the breathless trio.
"You might not be so fortunate. Far, far from it. How can any one more
than guess before one is fairly married and done for? Look at papa.
Does he not pass in society as quite a charming person? The women
like him, and if poor mama died he could get another quick as a wink.
But at the best, my dear girls, matrimony--in Germany, at least--is an
unmitigated bore. And in a garrison town! Literally, there is no liberty,
even with one's husband under the thumb. We live by rote. Every
afternoon I have to take coffee at some house or other, when all those
tiresome women are not at my own. And what do you suppose they talk
about--but invariably? _Love!_" (With ineffable disdain.) "Nothing
else, barring gossip and scandal; as if they got any good out of love!
But they are stupid for the most part and gorged with love novels. They
discuss the opera or the play for the love element only, or the sensual
quality of the music. Let me tell you that although I married to get rid
of papa, if I had it to do over I should accept parental tyranny as the
lesser evil. Not that I am not fond of Karl in a way. He is a dear and
would be quite harmless if he were not in love with me. But garrison
society--Gott, how German wives would rejoice in a war! Think of the
freedom of being a Red Cross nurse, and all the men at the front.
Officers would be your fate, too. Papa would not look at a man who
was not in the army. He despises men who live on their estates. So take
my advice while you may. Sit tight, as the English say. Even German
fathers do not live forever. The lime in our soil sees to that. I notice
papa's face gets quite purple after dinner, and when he is angry. His
arteries must have been hardening for twenty years."
Lili and Elsa were quite aghast at this naked ratiocination, but Gisela
whispered: "We might elope, you know."
"With whom? No Englishman or American ever crosses the threshold,
and Kate has no brothers. The students have no money and no morals,
and, what is worse, no baths. A burgess or a professional would be
quite as intolerable, and no man of our class would consent to an
elopement. Germans may be sentimental but they are not romantic
when it comes to settlements. Now take my advice."

They were taking it on this fateful day in the attic. They vowed never to
marry even if their formidable papa locked them up on bread and water.
"Which would be rather good for us," remarked the practical Elsa. "I
am sure we eat too much, and Gisela has a tendency to plumpness. But
your turn will not come for four years yet, dear child. It is poor us that
will need all our vows."
After some deliberation they concluded to inform their mother of their
grim resolve. Naturally sympathetic, a pregnant upheaval had taken
place in that good lady's psychology during the past year. Her marriage,