The Indiscretion of Elsbeth

"The Indiscretion of Elsbeth" by Bret Harte is a nuanced short story that explores themes of love, trust, and societal expectations in the context of the American West. The narrative centers around Elsbeth, a young woman torn between her independent spirit and the conventions of her time. As she navigates the complexities of her relationships, particularly with a captivating but misunderstood suitor, the story delves into the challenges of maintaining personal integrity while grappling with the perceptions and judgments of those around her. Harte's rich prose and keen observation of character provide a compelling glimpse into the moral dilemmas faced by individuals in a rapidly changing society.

• Short story

								
The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last half
hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieval
dream. Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the steamship that
carried him hither; and the accents of his own tongue, the idioms of
his own people, and the sympathetic community of New World tastes and
expressions still filled his mind until he woke up, or rather, as it
seemed to him, was falling asleep in the past of this Old World town
which had once held his ancestors. Although a republican, he had liked
to think of them in quaint distinctive garb, representing state and
importance--perhaps even aristocratic pre-eminence--content to let the
responsibility of such "bad eminence" rest with them entirely, but a
habit of conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led
him also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the
quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in a
doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of his
progenitors. For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in Europe, he
was not a snob, and it struck him--as an American--that it was,
perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved than as having
degenerated. In these ingenuous meditations he had passed the long rows
of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs and unpatched dilapidations
were yet far removed from squalor, until he had reached the road
bordered by poplars, all so unlike his own country's waysides--and knew
that he had wandered far from his hotel.

He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the way
he had come. There was, he reasoned, some other street or turning that
would eventually bring him to the market place and his hotel, and yet
extend his experience of the town. He turned at right angles into a
narrow grass lane, which was, however, as neatly kept and apparently as
public as the highway. A few moments' walking convinced him that it was
not a thoroughfare and that it led to the open gates of a park. This had
something of a public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be
at least a pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on
the exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance. The park lay in the
direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a park
of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable urban
space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he wandered on,
until he became conscious that he must have again lost his way, and he
diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset hedge to the right,
whose line he had been following.

As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side, speaking
in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet, met no one, and
being now impressed with the fact that for a public place the park was
singularly deserted, he was conscious that his position was getting
serious, and he determined to take this only chance of inquiring his
way. The hedge was thinner in some places than in others, and at times
he could see not only the light through it but even the moving figures
of the speakers, and the occasional white flash of a summer gown. At
last he determined to penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged
on the other side. But here he paused motionless. He found himself
behind a somewhat formal and symmetrical group of figures with their
backs toward him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his
own, and all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but which
now seemed to arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures were in
uniform. Immediately before him, but so slightly separated from
the others that he was enabled to see the house between her and her
companions, he was confronted by the pretty back, shoulders, and blond
braids of a young girl of twenty. Convinced that he had unwittingly
intruded upon some august ceremonial, he instantly slipped back into
the hedge, but so silently that his momentary presence was evidently
undetected. When he regained the park side he glanced back through
the interstices; there was no movement of the figures nor break in the
silence to indicate that his intrusion had been observed. With a long
breath of relief he hurried from the park.

It was late when he finally got back to his hotel. But his little modern
adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval reflections,
and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained porter in the
courtyard was in regard to the park. There was no public park in
Alstadt! The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof Gardens--the Schloss,
which was in the direction he indicated. The Schloss was the residency
of the hereditary Grand Duke. JA WOHL! He was stopping there with
several Hoheiten. There was naturally a party there--a family reunion.
But it was a private enclosure. At times, when the Grand Duke was "not in
residence," it was open to the public. In point of fact, at such times
tickets of admission were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige
each. There was not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and
dairy--the pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.

But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the modern
life of Alstadt. On entering the hotel, wearied by his long walk, he
passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on the landing
near his room. As he entered his apartment he had a vague impression,
without exactly knowing why, that the landlord and the military
stranger had just left it. This feeling was deepened by the evident
disarrangement of certain articles in his unlocked portmanteau and the
disorganization of his writing case. A wave of indignation passed over
him. It was followed by a knock at the door, and the landlord blandly
appeared with the stranger.

"A thousand pardons," said the former, smilingly, "but Herr Sanderman,
the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you. I hope we are
not intruding?"

"Not NOW," said the American, dryly.

The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.

"I have to ask only a few formal questions," said the Ober-Inspector in
excellent but somewhat precise English, "to supplement the report which,
as a stranger, you may not know is required by the police from the
landlord in regard to the names and quality of his guests who are
foreign to the town. You have a passport?"

"I have," said the American still more dryly. "But I do not keep it in
an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case."

"An admirable precaution," said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.
"May I see it? Thanks," he added, glancing over the document which the
American produced from his pocket. "I see that you are a born American
citizen--and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have prevented

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