What, still less, could he do when, after a night when he had lain awake ribbing up righteous anger, they awakened to a sparkling, growing day, and they walked along the Canal, lunched well, drove to the Wannsee and back, and watched sunset over the Tiergarten; when she stopped, twitched his sleeve, and said gravely, “Oh, Sam darling, will you let me thank you for all the lovely places you’ve taken me? I’m so heedless and silly that often I don’t speak of it, but all the while, inside of me, dear—”
Her eyes were wet.
“—I’m terribly grateful. Venice! Rome! Paris! And this quiet sunset. Thank you, dear. … And thank you for not being a Tartar husband—for understanding that I can be excited and friendly with nice little people like Kurt without being a hussy!”
Just what was he to do? Except perhaps to mutter, “Have I ever remembered to say I adore you?”
Nor could he turn on Kurt von Obersdorf, since Kurt was—after much doubting Sam believed it—quite as fond of him as of Fran; since Kurt seemed eager to bring them together again, whatever it might cost himself in a chance at Fran’s favors and fortune.
With the Dodsworths’ isolation in Berlin, Kurt’s ability to fall headlong in friendship, and Fran’s liking for the glories of a Count, however dimmed, they three became a family, and as one of the family Kurt sought to soothe them. He was curiously impartial; with all his emotionalism he was a fair umpire. When Fran snapped at her husband for his inability to learn any German beyond Zweimal dunkles, Kurt begged, “Oh, do not speak so crossly—that is not nize,” and when Sam growled that he’d be damned if he’d sit till two a.m. watching her dance, Kurt would represent, “But you ought to be happy to see her so happy! Forgive me! But she is so lovely when she is happy! And she is fragile. She is easily broken by things and moods that we do not mind.”
Kurt said—he really seemed to mean—that he too was lonely in Berlin, and though he very much did not want to intrude, he would be glad if he might play about with the Dodsworths every day that they remained. … And whatever his comparative poverty might be, he always paid his share of the bills.
“Be so much easier too if he weren’t so damn fair and square!” Sam sighed.
He had no proof, no proof whatever, that there was between Kurt and Fran anything more than this family affection.
Once or twice, as when the Berlin agent for the Revelation car looked Sam up and took him to a luncheon of the American Club, Kurt and Fran slipped away by themselves. He spent a conversational evening in the Adlon Bar while they went learnedly to the opera. After these outings, Fran looked rosy and content.
In London, thanks to the attentions of Mr. A. B. Hurd, Sam had retained something of a position as an industrialist. Since then, progressively, he had become merely the Husband of the Charming Mrs. Dodsworth. He saw it, though he could not see precisely how it had happened. In Berlin, he felt that no one considered him as anything save her attendant—even after the unfortunate incident of Herr Dr. Johann Josef Blumenbach.
Herr Blumenbach’s card was brought up to Sam as he was about to change for dinner. “Don’t know who he is. Still, name does sound kind of familiar. Probably some friend of hers,” Sam decided, and grumbled to the page, “Let him come up.”
When he informed Fran, who was sewing a snap on an evening frock in her bedroom, she protested that she knew no Blumenbachs. She followed him to their sitting-room, and sniffed. A square, bullet-headed, bristle-headed, swollen-nosed man was Herr Dr. Johann Josef Blumenbach, with ancient and absurd spats.
“Excuse me that I call on you, Herr Dodtswort’,” he sputtered, “and please to excuse my English, it is I guess owful bad English that I speak. But I have some liddle interest in a motor factory and from the motor magazines, besides my cousin lives in America, in St. Louis, I know moch about your development of the streamline in owtomobeelz. I vould be very pleast if Frau Dodtswort’ and you would care to look over our factory.”
Very suavely Fran eliminated Herr Blumenbach with, “That’s very kind of you, Herr Uh, but we’re leaving in just a couple of days, and I’m afraid we’re going to be frightfully busy. You will excuse us, I’m sure.”
He looked at her with a most active dislike; he snorted, “Oh, t’ank you very moch,” and disappeared with quite ludicrous haste.
“His nerve! Probably hoped to get money out of you for some horrible gamble,” she said placidly as Sam trailed her back to the significant business of sewing on the snap. “Horrid man! And you’d have taken an hour to get rid of him!”
When Kurt inevitably came in to pick them up for dinner, Sam inquired, “Ever hear of a man named Blumenback, Johann Blumenback or some such a name—something to do with motors?”
“But of course!” said Kurt.
“Horrid man,” offered Fran.
“Oh no‑o‑o! He iss a very fine man. Very public spirited. And he is one of the two or three big men in the motor industry in Germany. He controls the Mars company—I suppose the Mars is the finest motor in Europe—”
“Of course! That’s where I’d heard the name,” muttered Sam.
“—and I wish you could meet him. He would give you everything inside on motor industry here. But I have not the honor to know him. I have just seen him in a gesellschaft.”
“We must hurry!” said Fran.
And Sam said nothing at all.
He thought, many times, that if he telephoned to Herr Dr. Blumenbach, he might be accepted and entertained in Berlin as the Samuel Dodsworth he once had been—might thus again become that Samuel Dodsworth.
And he
