This urgent idea did not appear auspicious to Gard. If Deming got the run of Villa Elsa, he would unsettle things, interfere with his own work. Jim was a good boy but he played hob with study. And he was just the kind of flashy, ignorant Yankee who would prove to Villa Elsa what it claimed about the race. He would disgust the Buchers with his showy superficiality and dolessness. Mere money, everlasting money. More than all he would complicate the situation with Fräulein. He might upset her somehow, and at least discover his own secret feelings toward her--feelings that had become more distraught after the Von Tielitz revelation. In a word, everything would be helter-skelter.
After Jim had called twice, bent upon becoming intimate with the Buchers, Gard, as he thought, conceived a clever maneuver. He took Deming over to call on Fräulein Wasserhaus. Here was an earnest young woman, lolling on the gate with plenty of time on her hands, dying for a man. She could teach Deming everything he wanted to know. She was not antagonistic to Americans as were the Buchers. On the contrary she was aching to clasp some one of them in her pudgy arms.
But this stratagem proved a flat failure. When they came away from her abode, Jim took on a worried look and lit a cigarette.
"Say, see here, old chap. Are you trying to make fun of me? Is this a joke? I don't want a walrus, thirty years old, with ragbag clothes that fit her a foot off. She has a gait like an ice wagon. Why, she couldn't get a job as window-washer in the street car shops of Erie, Pay."
Deming's campaign against the terrible German language was unable to advance perceptibly beyond the stage of preparations. These were somewhat elaborate, especially from the standpoint of expense. He had a multiplicity of instructors and grammars. If they had been placed side by side they might have reached from the Green Vault to the Zwinger.
He blamed these agencies of instruction. His "professors" he generally picked up at the Stadt Gotha where he played billiards. While these parties were fair with the ivories, they could not seem to knock any caroms of German around the cushions of Jim's brain.
His daily routine was like this: At ten, his lesson in Dutch. Teacher would come. Great show of hospitality. There must be something to drink. The preceptor must try one of the fancy pipes, of which Deming had collected a large array in Germany. He would be feeling knocked in this morning, having been up late consuming numerous bocks in amicable emulation of the local prowess. He had not got around to his lesson and had concluded he did not think much of his present grammar. Herr Preceptor would suggest procuring another which would strew roses no doubt along the thorny path. Capital idea. Of course they must then wait for the new grammar.