She was a fragile old lady, like a porcelain cup, and she seemed translucent as porcelain. She called Fran “my dear,” and she welcomed Sam to Germany. Apparently Kurt had telephoned about the Dodsworths; she said that she was glad to have a “great American industrialist” see Germany first hand.
“My poor stricken country needs the cooperation of America. We look to you—and if you do not give back the glance we shall have to look to Russia.”
She was apparently convinced that Sam had come in a limousine; she asked whether he had sent his chauffeur round back for his tea; and when she learned that Kurt and these visiting dignitaries had actually lunched at a low Volk Lokal and walked into Potsdam, she shook her head, as one not understanding. There were so many things the little old Princess did not understand in these machine-devoured days, she who as a girl had known the security of an old cow-smelling country house in Silesia and of a rose-red Tudor mansion in Wiltshire, in a day when counts did not work in tourist agencies, and America was a wilderness to which rebellious peasants ran off, quite unaccountably and naughtily. But there was the reality of breeding in her, and she tried to understand this bulky “great American industrialist” who was so silently pleasant, this vivacious American woman with the marvelous ruffled blouse peeping from her little blue jacket, the ageless American girl whose gay poise reduced the Count Obersdorf to the position of rattle-headed boy.
Sam perceived the worn elegance of the Princess, took pride in Fran’s deference, and found restfulness in the drawing-room, which had very bad gilt chairs, an over-ornamented porcelain stove with very bad plaques of bounding shepherdesses, very bad pictures of stag-hunting and moonlight, far too many glass cases with Prince Drachenthal’s decorations, far too many faded cabinet photographs of the 80’s and 90’s and yet, bad in all its details, was suggestive of aristocratic generations.
A retired German general came in for tea, with a refugee Russian colonel-baron, a Frau von Something who was apparently so distinguished that no one thought of explaining her, and a handsome fervent boy, the Princess’s grandson, who was taking his examinations in law at the University of Bonn and who wanted, he said, to go to America. They were free of Renée de Pénable’s pretentiousness, as simple as a group at Tub Pearson’s, decided Sam. No, they were simpler, for Tub would have to be humorous for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen, no matter how it hurt. Kurt von Obersdorf had dropped all of the slight skittishness into which he fell when he pranced for Fran’s benefit, and he was discussing Bolshevism with the Russian ex-colonel.
They somehow lured Sam into talking. He discovered himself being eloquent about chrome steel and General Motors stock, while Fran, in a corner, was deferentially lively with Princess Drachenthal.
“Sort of like coming home—no, it’s more like coming home than coming home will be, because Fran is satisfied here. Oh, Lord, will she be satisfied in Zenith when—Oh, quit fussing! Course she will!” reflected the inner Sam, while the outer Mr. Dodsworth sagely informed them, “—and in my opinion the greatest fallacy in world-marketing today is a competition between American, German, French, English and Italian cars in South America, instead of all of us combining to educate the South Americans to use more motors and especially to help them to build more through highways that would tap every square mile of the continent—”
He wondered why Fran had been uneasy, in Venice, with Edith Cortright, when she was suavely at ease with Princess Drachenthal, far more of a personage.
“Because she was jealous? Because Mrs. Cortright, an American, has a position and a flat in a palace and everything? Or because she felt Mrs. Cortright could catch her easier when she was bluffing? No! That’s unfair! Fran is no bluffer! Look how lovely she is to the old Princess, and how the Count and the General and everybody falls for her!”
They rode back to Berlin in the train, rather quietly. Sam hinted that Kurt must have an engagement for the evening, but Kurt protested, almost childishly, “Oh no! Are you bored with me? You must let me take you to dinner!”
“Of course, we’d be enchanted,” said Fran, and Sam, prodded with a look, achieved, “Mighty nice of you, Count.”
“If you really like, I will show you a nice restaurant, and maybe later—if you are not too tired, Madame—we could go a little while to some place to dance. You dance, I know, like an angel.”
“Next to Carry Nation and Susan B. Anthony,” said Fran gravely, “I am probably the best dancer in America.”
“They are famous dancers?” said Kurt.
“Yes, they’re so good they’re known in America as the Gold Dust twins,” explained Sam.
“Really? And you dance like them, Madame? I shall have to be very good!” said Kurt.
While Fran dressed for dinner, Sam and Kurt had sidecar cocktails in the Adlon Bar. Sam liked the scarlet Chinese Chippendale walls, with little Burmese figures; the somewhat obese Bacchanalians in the painting over the bar; the corners with settees comforting to a drinking man; and the fact that here was one place in Europe where no foreign language—i.e., any language save American, with traces of English—was ever heard.
At the bar were always half a dozen of the American businessmen stationed in Berlin—shipping-men, bankers, representatives of the movies, and for the American journalists it was a club, where they exchanged tips on Russia and Romania, Breitscheid’s coming speech and the Zentrum Party’s capture of the schools.
“I like this; I see myself sneaking in here pretty often,” Sam promised himself.
He forgot the bar in attention to Kurt’s confidences. He had never known anyone so frankly emotional about his friends as Kurt, nor one so eager to be
