STORIES IN LIGHT AND SHADOW

“UNSER KARL”

The American consul for Schlachtstadt had just turned out of the broad Konig’s Allee into the little square that held his consulate.  Its residences always seemed to him to wear that singularly uninhabited air peculiar to a street scene in a theatre.  The facades, with their stiff, striped wooden awnings over the windows, were of the regularity, color, and pattern only seen on the stage, and conversation carried on in the street below always seemed to be invested with that perfect confidence and security which surrounds the actor in his painted desert of urban perspective.  Yet it was a peaceful change to the other byways and highways of Schlachtstadt which were always filled with an equally unreal and mechanical soldiery, who appeared to be daily taken out of their boxes of “caserne” or “depot” and loosely scattered all over the pretty linden-haunted German town.  There were soldiers standing on street corners; soldiers staring woodenly into shop windows; soldiers halted suddenly into stone, like lizards, at the approach of Offiziere; Offiziere lounging stiffly four abreast, sweeping the pavement with their trailing sabres all at one angle.  There were cavalcades of red hussars, cavalcades of blue hussars, cavalcades of Uhlans, with glittering lances and pennons—­with or without a band—­formally parading; there were straggling “fatigues” or “details” coming round the corners; there were dusty, businesslike columns of infantry, going nowhere and to no purpose.  And they one and all seemed to be wound up—­for that service—­and apparently always in the same place.  In the band of their caps—­invariably of one pattern—­was a button, in the centre of which was a square opening or keyhole.  The consul was always convinced that through this keyhole opening, by means of a key, the humblest caporal wound up his file, the Hauptmann controlled his lieutenants and non-commissioned officers, and even the general himself, wearing the same cap, was subject through his cap to a higher moving power.  In the suburbs, when the supply of soldiers gave out, there were sentry-boxes; when these dropped off, there were “caissons,” or commissary wagons.  And, lest the military idea should ever fail from out the Schlachtstadt’s burgher’s mind, there were police in uniform, street-sweepers in uniform; the ticket-takers, guards, and sweepers at the Bahnhof were in uniform,—­but all wearing the same kind of cap, with the probability of having been wound up freshly each morning for their daily work.  Even the postman delivered peaceful invoices to the consul with his side-arms and the air of bringing dispatches from the field of battle; and the consul saluted, and felt for a few moments the whole weight of his consular responsibility.